Android – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Sun, 07 Dec 2025 22:27:07 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Android – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast Android – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 474 – Goldilocks Zone https://mintcast.org/474-goldilocks-zone/ Sun, 07 Dec 2025 22:27:06 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7739 First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – November, and a variety of other items

In security and privacy: Cloudfare goes down and Charles finds out that Shai-Hulud returns from Arrakis

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

]]> First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – November, and a variety of other items

In security and privacy: Cloudfare goes down and Charles finds out that Shai-Hulud returns from Arrakis

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Link To Full Show Notes

The News:


Mint Monthly News – November 2025


Mozilla Unveils Plans for New ‘AI Window’ Browsing Mode in Firefox, Opens Signups


KDE Plasma 6.8 Desktop Environment to Drop the X11 Session and Go Wayland-Only


Windows 11 Growth Slows As Millions Stick With Windows 10


FreeBSD 15 trims legacy fat and revamps how OS is built


Ownership of Digital Content Is an Illusion Unless You Self‑Host


The Last Video Rental Store Is Your Public Library


Jellyfin does hardware transcoding for free, and Plex wants $250 to match it


Mad Men’s 4K debut botched by HBO Max streaming episode with visible crewmembers


Netflix Buys Warner Bros. including HBO & HBO Max for $83 Billion


Cloudflare blames Friday outage on borked React2shell fix


Emulating PC games on Android is easier than ever, and you can thank Valve

Security And Privacy:


Shai-Hulud worm returns, belches secrets to 25K GitHub repos


Twins who hacked State Dept hired to work for gov again, now charged with deleting databases (And then they asked an AI to help cover their tracks)

Check This Out:


Clone like a boss – Veronica Explains

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing and for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 474 474 Goldilocks Zone full 1:14:36 7739 470 – Laptop Rescue Service AKA “Send us your stuff!” https://mintcast.org/470-laptop-rescue-service-aka-send-us-your-stuff/ Sun, 12 Oct 2025 21:53:38 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7680 First up in the news: LMDE 7 ‘Gigi” release imminent, Mint Monthly News, Ubuntu 25.10 is out and breaking stuff, Firefox shaking is loved by TIME, Windows 10 is officially dead and lots more!

In security and privacy: Charles has some interesting news on AI and new laws in Spain

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

]]> First up in the news: LMDE 7 ‘Gigi” release imminent, Mint Monthly News, Ubuntu 25.10 is out and breaking stuff, Firefox shaking is loved by TIME, Windows 10 is officially dead and lots more!

In security and privacy: Charles has some interesting news on AI and new laws in Spain

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Link To Full Show Notes

The News:


LMDE 7 Release Imminent


Mint Monthly News – September 2025


Ubuntu 25.10 released, and breaks flatpaks!


Ubuntu Linux 26.04 LTS Officially Named Resolute Raccoon


Cosmic Beta released


Mozilla Firefox is about to add an important feature other browsers have had for years: Profile Management


Mozilla Firefox Shake To Summarize feature gets special mention in TIME’s Best Inventions of 2025


Opera Wants You To Pay $19.90 a Month for Its New AI Browser


Android Security or Vendor Lock-In? Google’s New Sideloading Rules Smell Fishy


Open Source Android Repository F-Droid Says Google’s New Rules Will Shut It Down


Amazon Ditches Android — Launches ‘Linux-Based’ Vega OS for Fire TV


TiVo Exiting Legacy DVR Business


California Law Forces Netflix, Hulu To Turn Down Ad Volumes


Windows 10 support ends on October 14, 2025



PC Sales Explode In Q3 As Windows 11 Deadlines Force Millions To Upgrade


Microsoft Is Plugging More Holes That Let You Use Windows 11 Without an Online Account

Security and Privacy:


AI for America – “A Roadmap to Make AI Work for All Americans, Not Just Big Companies”


Spain’s New age Verification

Check This Out:


Workaround for Flatpaks

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing and for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 470 470 Laptop Rescue Service AKA "Send us your stuff!" full 1:43:58 7680 448 – The Archive Is Breached! https://mintcast.org/448-the-archive-is-breached/ Thu, 17 Oct 2024 10:06:37 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7220 First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – September, Xfce 4.20 creeps toward Wayland support, Archive.org is breached, Arch and Valve team up, WWWFoundation packs it in, More WordPress news, even MORE WordPress News, and Google adds Linux apps to future Android versions

Then in our Wanderings: Bill connects with the younger generation, Joe is still fixing things, Moss whines, and Majid folds some more

]]> First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – September, Xfce 4.20 creeps toward Wayland support, Archive.org is breached, Arch and Valve team up, WWWFoundation packs it in, More WordPress news, even MORE WordPress News, and Google adds Linux apps to future Android versions

Then in our Wanderings: Bill connects with the younger generation, Joe is still fixing things, Moss whines, and Majid folds some more

Full Show Notes Here

The News:


Mint Monthly News – September, 2024


Xfce 4.20 creeps toward Wayland support


Archive.org, a repository of the history of the Internet, has a data breach


Arch Linux and Valve team up to make Steam gaming even better


WWW Foundation packs it in


159 employees are leaving Automattic as CEO’s fight with WP Engine escalates


WordPress.org’s latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin


Google is preparing to let you run Linux apps on Android, just like Chrome OS


KDE neon upgrades to 24.04.1 Ubuntu base

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>

]]> 448 448 The Archive Is Breached! full 1:50:23 7220 443 – Wilma Has Arrived https://mintcast.org/443-wilma-has-arrived/ Wed, 07 Aug 2024 21:38:51 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7089 First up in the news: Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” released, Switzerland now requires all government software to be open source, Intel suffers stock losses, Intel admits to damage on 13th and 14th gen processors, Funtoo calls it quits, and SerpentOS makes its first appearance

In security and privacy: SecureBoot is broken on over 200 computers from 5 major vendors, new Android malware drains bank accounts and wipes your device afterwards, and TGRat attacks Linux;

]]>
First up in the news: Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” released, Switzerland now requires all government software to be open source, Intel suffers stock losses, Intel admits to damage on 13th and 14th gen processors, Funtoo calls it quits, and SerpentOS makes its first appearance

In security and privacy: SecureBoot is broken on over 200 computers from 5 major vendors, new Android malware drains bank accounts and wipes your device afterwards, and TGRat attacks Linux

Full Show Notes Here

The News:


Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” released


Switzerland now requires all government software to be open source


Intel Suffers Major Stock Loss Due to Workforce Restructuring


Proton Now Has a Bitcoin Wallet


Intel admits damage to unstable 14th-gen and 13th-gen CPUs is permanent – incoming patch is a preventative, not a cure


Funtoo Calls It Quits


The long-awaited Linux distro Serpent OS is finally here

Secuity and Privacy:


Secure Boot is completely broken on 200+ models from 5 big device makers


New Android malware wipes your device after draining bank accounts


Telegram-Controlled TgRat Attacking Linux Servers to Exfiltrate Data

Contact Info:

Special Thanks:

  • Bill for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
]]> 443 443 Wilma Has Arrived full 1:10:52 7089 432 – “Podcasts Are Better” https://mintcast.org/432-podcasts-are-better/ Wed, 06 Mar 2024 04:53:59 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6736 First up in the news: KDE MegaRelease 6, No open source HDMI 2.1 driver

In security and privacy: New Wi-Fi Vulnerabilities Expose Android and Linux Devices to Hackers

Then in our Wanderings: Bill stops rolling, Joe surprises people by fixing things, Majid needs audio files to become an audiophile

Right Click Here To Download
]]> First up in the news: KDE MegaRelease 6, No open source HDMI 2.1 driver

In security and privacy: New Wi-Fi Vulnerabilities Expose Android and Linux Devices to Hackers,

Then in our Wanderings: Bill stops rolling, Joe surprises people by fixing things, Majid needs audio files to become an audiophile

Full Show Notes Here

The News

KDE MegaRelease 6

HDMI Forum to AMD: No, you can’t make an open source HDMI 2.1 driver

LibreOffice 24.2.1 Office Suite Is Out with More Than 100 Bug Fixes

GParted 1.6 Open-Source Partition Editor Improves exFAT Support and Fixes Bugs – 9to5Linux

Nintendo Sues Yuzu Emulator Developers for Facilitating Switch Piracy

Security And Privacy

New Wi-Fi Vulnerabilities Expose Android and Linux Devices to Hackers

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 432 432 "Podcasts Are Better" full true 1:52:11 6736 422.5 – When In ROM https://mintcast.org/422-5-when-in-rom/ Wed, 11 Oct 2023 04:00:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6402 In our Innards section we continue the conversation about Android, and the variants thereof

In "Check This Out" GNU turns 40!

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Download
]]> In our Innards section we continue the conversation about Android, and the variants thereof

In “Check This Out” GNU turns 40!

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Full Show Notes can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contribution
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 422 422 When In ROM full 1:42:06 6402 411 – We Like It GUI https://mintcast.org/411-we-like-it-gui/ Thu, 04 May 2023 00:58:47 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6120 First up in the news, Linux Kernel 6.3 Officially Released, blendOS 2 supports Android, new Vivaldi out, new Opera One Dev Release, GIMP completes GTK3 rewrite, QEMU drops 32-bit, Ryzens are burning, Proton launches a password app, Jetpack Announces the end of twitter auto-sharing, and Red Hat lays of 4% due to high profits;

In security and privacy, Mullvad foils a search warrant, and RTM Locker targets NAS and ESXi;

Then in our Wanderings, Joe goes 3D, Moss upgrades, Bill shuffles cards, Majid has a few lightbulb moments, and Dale has entered the Void.

Download
]]> First up in the news, Linux Kernel 6.3 Officially Released, blendOS 2 supports Android, new Vivaldi out, new Opera One Dev Release, GIMP completes GTK3 rewrite, QEMU drops 32-bit, Ryzens are burning, Proton launches a password app, Jetpack Announces the end of twitter auto-sharing, and Red Hat lays of 4% due to high profits;


In security and privacy, Mullvad foils a search warrant, and RTM Locker targets NAS and ESXi;


Then in our Wanderings, Joe goes 3D, Moss upgrades, Bill shuffles cards, Majid has a few lightbulb moments, and Dale has entered the Void.

The News

Linux Kernel 6.3 Officially Released

Ubuntu 23.04 is Now Available for Download (All Flavours)

blendOS 2 Is Already Here and Supports Android Apps Out of the Box

Vivaldi 6.0: Organize Tabs and More

New Opera One Browser

GTK3 port of GIMP is “officially finished”

QEMU 8.0 Released with 32-bit support deprecated

Ryzen 7000 processors are burning up

Proton launches encrypted password manager

The World Wide Web becomes public 30 years ago today

Jetpack Announces End of Twitter Auto-Sharing

Red Hat, Black Anger

Security And Privacy

Mullvad Subjected to Search Warrant, Nothing To Find, Cops Left

RTM Locker’s First Linux Ransomware Strain Targeting NAS and ESXi Hosts

Full Show notes can be found here

Wrap Up

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible:

  • Joe for the Audio Editing
  • Josh Lowe, and Bill Houser for all their work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for show research, time syncs, and general contribution.
  • Bill Houser  for managing the pi 400 that hosts mintcast.org
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 411 411 We Like It GUI full 2:18:55 6120 407 – “There’s an App For That” https://mintcast.org/407-theres-an-app-for-that/ Wed, 08 Mar 2023 04:55:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5993 First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – February, Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak, Linux desktop powers consider uniting for an app store, Ubuntu Devs Working on ‘Mini’ Installer, Mesa 23 released, Mozilla narcs on Android apps, Fedora caught thinking, Linux supports Apple chips, OnlyOffice integrates, Falkon accelerates

In security and privacy, LastPass Devs accounts get breached, NSA wants to help

Then we have our usual Wanderings

In our Innards section, we talk about the Android apps we can't live without.

Download]]>
  • First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – February, Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak, Linux desktop powers consider uniting for an app store, Ubuntu Devs Working on ‘Mini’ Installer, Mesa 23 released, Mozilla narcs on Android apps, Fedora caught thinking, Linux supports Apple chips, OnlyOffice integrates, Falkon accelerates,
  • In security and privacy, LastPass Devs accounts get breached, NSA wants to help
  • Then we have our usual wanderings.
    • In our Innards section we discuss the Android Apps We can’t live without
    • And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

    Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit. Youtube.

    Wrap-up

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible:

    Archive.org for hosting our audio files

    Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo

    Londoner for our time syncs

    Bill Houser for hosting the Pi400 which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio

    The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about

    ]]>     407 407 "There's an App For That" full 2:20:10 5993     405 – Method Not Allowed https://mintcast.org/405-method-not-allowed/ Wed, 08 Feb 2023 14:29:19 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5925 First up in the news, Mint 21.2 has the codename Victoria, OpenSuse updates, helloSystem says hello for the 0.8th time, new Firefox allows imports, Xfce goes Waylanding, Cosmic DE speeds up, OBS Studio fixes Linux Wayland bug, and Elementary has a new release.

    In security and privacy, we report on after log4j, Boldmove, and Malvirt.

    Then in our Wanderings, Joe calls Texas for Icing, and Moss is having New Phone Fever; Bill is in Colorado doing a rescue and will be back next episode.

    In our Innards section we discuss what you can do with old Android devices.

    Download
    ]]>     First up in the news, Mint 21.2 has the codename Victoria, OpenSuse updates, helloSystem says hello for the 0.8th time, new Firefox allows imports, Xfce goes Waylanding, Cosmic DE speeds up, OBS Studio fixes Linux Wayland bug, and Elementary has a new release;

    In security and privacy, we report on after log4j, Boldmove, and Malvirt;

    Then in our Wanderings, Joe calls Texas for Icing, and Moss is having New Phone Fever; Bill is in Colorado doing a rescue and will be back next episode.

    Shape2

    In our Innards section we discuss what you can do with old Android devices;

    And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

    Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit. Youtube.

    Wrap-up

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible:

    AudioFreak (Riyo) for our audio editing

    Archive.org for hosting our audio files

    Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo

    Londoner for our time syncs

    Bill Houser for hosting the Pi400 which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio

    The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about

    ]]>     405 405 Method Not Allowed full 1:15:43 5925     394 – With music on our side to break the old hard drives https://mintcast.org/394-with-music-on-our-side-to-break-the-old-hard-drives/ Fri, 26 Aug 2022 15:20:07 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5598 In security and privacy, Discord and your passwords are pythoned, and hard drives apparently have a taste in music
    Then in our Wanderings, Joe plays with his handheld, Bill is setting up a new server, Moss skips the assault and gets a couple batteries, and Norbert has had done some things.
    Download
    ]]>     1:25 The News
    16:15 Security and Privacy
    26:03 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
    1:22:59 Housekeeping and Announcements

    First up in the news, The Kernel gets a bump, LibreOffice adds a point, Android 13 is out if you have a Pixel, and Gnome has a birthday,

    In security and privacy, Discord and your passwords are pythoned, and hard drives apparently have a taste in music

    Then in our Wanderings, Joe plays with his handheld, Bill is setting up a new server, Moss skips the assault and gets a couple batteries, and Norbert has had done some things.

    Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit. Youtube.

    The News

    Security and Privacy Update

    Announcements

    Wrap-up

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible:

    • Norbert, Londoner, Tony H, and all others for our audio editing
    • Leo for timestamps and publishing
    • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
    • Hobstar for our logo
    • initrd for the animated Discord logo
    • Londoner for our time sync
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • HPR for our backup Mumble room
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
    ]]>     394 - With music on our side to break the old hard drives full 1:26:24 5598     374.5 – “Smart” Phones https://mintcast.org/374-5-smart-phones/ Fri, 26 Nov 2021 06:22:38 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5280 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
    Download
    ]]>     1:46 Linux Innards
    42:07 Vibrations from the Ether
    51:07 Check This Out
    54:28 Announcements & Outro

    In our Innards section, phones
    And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

    Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit. Youtube.

    Linux Innards

    • Joe
      • First smartphone was the samsung behold 2 which i hated
      • I also had the htc dash which was a blackberry knockoff but pretty awesome
      • Then the htc hd2 which is the most modded phone ever
        • Windows mobile
        • Android
        • Linux
      • After that i went back to samsung and had the s3 which is a great phone and if you can find one that is working still has its uses.  My son is using one now
        • I used this phone until it died, smaller device but ran well and did everything i needed
        • Still good today as an MP3 player which is what my son uses it for
      • Then the Note 3
        • I used this for a long time
      • S7
        • I still use this for some things but the ports are getting old.  The 3.5mm jack no longer works and the usb connection is a bit wobbly
      • Note 10 plus
    • Tony
      • History – The First Smartphone I bought was the Nexus 4 which I got in February 2013. This was a great introduction to the smartphone experience but quickly started to feel restricted and in October 2014 I made the giant leap to a OnePlus1 which I paid £299 but was a premium phone for a mid range price at the time.
      • When that started to feel its age in 2017 I bought a Nokia 6, this was a great Phone and the following year I purchased the 6.1 upgrade for my wife who had been using my old Nexus 4 as her first Smartphone. Unfortunately I dropped the Nokia in 2018 smashing the screen badly and was sold the Huawei P20 lite which I used as my daily driver until last week when I went and bought the Nokia X20 6.6” behemoth which I am still getting used to.
      • This phone has the advantage of receiving guaranteed Android updates for 3 years from release and I should get to Android 14 before the time runs out from the current Android 11 that is installed.
      • Before retiring the OnePlus1 as my daily driver I did delve into the world of alternative Roms and successfully installed Lineage to it, but had an issue with upgrading it at one point and that led me to purchasing the Nokia 6. A while back I decided to have a play with the OnePlus1 and I have installed Ubuntu Touch to it and last night was playing with it and have got it running the latest update of the 16.04 install. I know that they are working on getting 20.04 and I have enabled this to be downloaded as an OTA update when available for the OnePlus1.
    • Norbert
      • 2010 – Neonode N2
      • 2010 – (Apple iPod Touch 4G)
      • 2014 – Sony Xperia SP
      • 2015 – Sony Xperia Z Ultra
      • 2016 – (Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 9.7”)
      • 2017 – Sony Xperia X Compact
      • 2019 – Samsung Galax
      • y A8 (2018)
      • 2021 – LG G7 ThinQ
    • Josh
      • My initial foray into the world of smartphones were all lower tier devices which were “free” with the signing of a contract. They were all quite terrible and that’s probably why I can’t remember any of them specifically.
      • My first noteworthy smartphone was a Nexus 5 which I purchased early in 2014. It was quite an impressive device for its price point and I still have it today as a backup phone, although it now runs Ubuntu Touch in place of Android. I have had to replace the battery on it once and it does suffer from the all too common power button issue on occasion that causes it to constantly reboot which is why I eventually moved on from it.
      • From there I decided I wanted to focus more on privacy so I went through a number of different flip and feature phones only to find most of them ran stripped down versions of Android and the lackluster performance was maddening. Just attempting to text while the system lagged caused multiple input errors but there was a bit of nostalgia returning to T9 predictive text.
      • I decided to return to the world of smartphones and purchased an LG V30+ off of Ebay. I got it at a very reduced price due to some screen burn in but the phone was pristine outside of that. This is still my daily driver today even though the OS hasn’t received a security update since August of 2019. The DAC is still considered by many to be the best ever put in a phone which is why I’m reluctant to replace it. I use it mainly for listening to music and podcasts and store as little personal data as possible on it.
      • I also purchased a Pinephone UB Ports edition and a Sony Xperia X which I installed Ubuntu Touch on with hopes that one of them could serve as a privacy focused daily driver. The Xperia is usable if you’re willing to compromise convenience quite considerably but the Pinephone remains little more than a developer’s toy that cannot be daily driven under any realistic circumstances. Unfortunately it seems the reality of a capable Linux phone is still quite a ways off into the distance, the hardware is there but the software is definitely not.

    Vibrations from the Ether

    • Brad A
    • Larry M
    • William W

    Check This Out

    Announcements

    Wrap-up

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

    • Norbert for our audio production
    • Leo for timestamps and publishing
    • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
    • Hobstar for our logo
    • initrd for the animated Discord logo
    • Londoner for our time sync
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • HPR for our backup Mumble room
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
    ]]>     374.5 - "Smart" Phones full 58:04 5280     366.5 – Protect Your Bits https://mintcast.org/366-5-protect-your-bits/ Wed, 04 Aug 2021 06:36:21 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5159 And finally, the feedback and a couple community choices
    Download
    ]]>     1:56 Linux Innards
    33:35 Vibrations from the Ether
    49:15 Check This Out
    59:02 Announcements & Outro

    In our Innards section we talk OpenVPN, Wireguard and staying safe online

    And finally, the feedback and a couple community choices

    Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

    Linux Innards

    Vibrations from the Ether

    Check This Out

    Announcements

    Wrap-up

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

    • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo, and Londoner for our time sync
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • HPR for our backup Mumble room
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
    ]]>     366.5 - Protect Your Bits full 1:02:55 5159     mintCast 364 – The Better Beta https://mintcast.org/mintcast-364-the-better-beta/ Wed, 30 Jun 2021 05:15:42 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5118 Then, our news Linux Mint Beta is out! Rocky Linux is official, and Elementary OS tries Beta 2
    In security, lost data
    Download
    ]]>     2:24 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
    53:37 The News
    1:36:34 Security Update
    1:42:59 Announcements & Outro

    First up, in our Wanderings, I go ECO friendly, Josh’s DHCP fails, Joe is heavily medicated, and Tony is playing with EndeavorOS while on holiday

    Then, our news Linux Mint Beta is out! Rocky Linux is official, and Elementary OS tries Beta 2

    In security, lost data

    Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

    Bi-Weekly Wanderings

    The News

    Security Update

    Announcements

    Wrap-up

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

    • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo, and Londoner for our time sync
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • HPR for our backup Mumble room
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
    ]]>     full 5118     mintCast 343 – Tinfoil Not Included (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-343-tinfoil-not-included-mp3/ Wed, 09 Sep 2020 04:27:36 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4615 Then, in the news, we have news from Mint, Debian, and  MX Linux. We also say goodbye to a team member.
    In security, we take a break from the doom and gloom and just talk tinfoil.
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    1:47 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
    42:01 Vibrations from the Ether
    1:05:00 Check This Out
    1:26:51 Outro

    First up, in our Wanderings, I recorded some how-to’s, Moss has computers raining on him, Joe reads and repairs, Tony Watts jams and tinkers, and Bo and Tony Hughes will be back next episode.

    Then, in the news, we have news from Mint, Debian, and  MX Linux. We also say goodbye to a team member.

    In security, we take a break from the doom and gloom and just talk tinfoil.

    BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • I’ve finally gotten some time to record a couple more how-to’s. Bashtop and Bpytop.
      • Also, I’m fairly current on Full Circle Weekly News again! I plan on doing a two-week episode this week to get current and it feels good.
    • Moss
      • About 2 hours after completing the last episode, I went to plug my speakers back into my desktop, slipped, and somehow shorted out my computer. A new power supply, thanks to Tony Hughes, arrived on Tuesday, and surprise, it was the wrong size. I’m supposed to have a mini ITX machine, and ordered accordingly, but the power supply in the box (and, yes, I should have looked first) was a full sized ATX. 
      • After complaining about that to the Telegram group, Fuzzy shipped me a new tower computer which will blow the socks off what I had. That should get here next Saturday.
      • I went ahead and returned the power supply to Amazon and have ordered the correct power supply from NewEgg, and when I get the old desktop repaired and running, I will find a deserving schoolkid to give it to.
      • On top of that, I went out to visit a friend last night, and came home with a pretty high-end older HP tower computer (Win 7 Home Premium license, early i7 processor). It’s quite dirty right now, so I’ll clean it up, check the specs and whether it runs, and see if I can find someone to give (or sell cheap) it to.
      • I tried using the Pi 4 as my TV machine but could not get my VPN to start, even though it was installed. Mullvad customer support was disappointing, considering how long I have been a customer.
      • So I signed up for a new VPN called Surfshark. If I can get it to work, it will cost about the same for 2 years as I would have paid for 8 months to Mullvad. It’s good when it works, but apparently that’s only on Ubuntu-based systems (a fact they neglected to mention). The Linux app is non-existent, although it has a nice app for Android and anything else. Their tech support was friendly initially, but now they’re falling into patterns of “Well, Linux users don’t want an easy way to run our VPN…”
      • What I haven’t done yet is try Surfshark on the Pi 4. Coming soon.
      • I moved the 1 Tb SSD from my desktop to my laptop last Tuesday night. I started running updates, as it had been about 11 days since these 7 distros had been updated. My Manjaro installation would not load, so I reinstalled it, then installed OpenMandriva on the remaining unused partition. I had both Feren OS and KDE neon which were basically Ubuntu-running-KDE and yearned for more diversity, so I flipped a coin and replaced Feren OS with Ubuntu Unity. I’m way behind on getting all these distros as near equivalent as possible or even evaluating their current status, things have been so much in flux.  I have also installed Surfshark on the four Ubuntu-based distros.
      • I have a new digital watch and fitness tracker. It only cost $7.95 and a two-month wait for it to get here from Szenchen, China. It connects to a phone app and can attach to social media and email but I don’t want that. I have no idea what other data it collects, but I’ve gained 20 pounds since my accident and want some incentive and help to start going the other way again. Besides the time function, it also detects my pulse, blood pressure, and even blood oxygen, as well as my steps. You ease the friction-fit watchband off on one end to expose the USB terminal — yes, you plug the entire watch into a USB port to charge it. A charge seems to last 3-4 days. There are virtually no controls on the watch, everything is run through the app.
      • My unemployment ran out. Not weeks, but dollars. My final check was under $100, so no covid money for Moss this week. On the other hand, I have 3 job possibilities, and it looks as if one of them will go through, although it will be a temporary job. Feast or famine. I’m not completely out of money yet, but it could be a race between that and my first paycheck. I have been encouraged to talk to a lawyer about the fact that I have been getting paid out of Unemployment dollars instead of Worker’s Comp funds, but the covid-19 money received puts a major question mark in that process as that comes only with unemployment money. While the potential fraud was not on my part, I was the beneficiary of it.
      • My mother went back to the hospital after she fell and broke the pin in her hip. They repaired the pin successfully. She has been moved from the hospital to the rehab facility, where she will spend at least a few weeks. She’s 91 now, in case you lost count.
      • We finished reading Blood Rites, the 6th Dresden book, and have started in on Dead Beat.
    • Joe
      • Soulwood series by Faith Hunter,  4 books of 5
        • Same universe as the Jane Yellowrock series.
        • Good series
      • Locke and Key audio drama
        • Based on the comics
        • Well done, easy to follow and interesting
      • Junkyard Pirate by Jamie McFarlane
        • Second book as well
      • Also from Jamie Mcfarlane
        • Wizard in a Witchy World series
      • Ministry of Curiosity (10 books)
        • Good series. Feels a bit generic, nothing really stands out for me
        • Sometimes the books in the series felt like nothing really happened.  Like there was no overriding antagonistic event
      • Suggest some good cyberpunk novels
      • 3D-printed a whole setup for the macro keyboards.  
        • 12 key and it works very well
        • I am very happy with the quality and I may do a few more
        • Using it to control my mic mute button and also have it setup for vlc and docker using auto hotkey functions
        • Still looking for the most comfortable position to mount it
      • Also got some very thin wire .1mm to see if I can bridge the bad spots on that other board so I can have another one.
        • Once I get it working correctly I will 3D print a case for it
        • It is also the wire that I used to run the grounds for all the other keys on the one i printed
      • My water heater started leaking.  Went through a good chunk of my garage and most of my kitchen.  Caught it quickly though and got the water shut off so not much damage.
        • Going through the warranty company to get it fixed. 
        • Warranty company has been somewhat hit or miss over the years so…
        • Cost me a bit over 500 so that is not too bad.
        • Need to build a moisture sensor for it and not sure if I should use an arduino or a Pi.  What do you think?
      • This also meant that I had to shuffle my garage around a couple of times.  Once to get everything off the far wall and once to get everything out of the way so that they could get the new one in.
        • This allowed me to restructure my storage and work area
        • My son helped me figure out where to put some things in order to maximize my space and make it look neater
        • Still have a lot more work to do 
      • I have  an iPod docking station that is going to be my next item to work on.  Looks more like a sound bar.  It turns on and the clock works but no sound comes out no matter what you set the input to.  Gonna be fun taking it apart and seeing where the break is.
      • Revamping my workout
    • Tony Watts
      • Basement finishing continues
        • Added some insulation to the ceiling.  This helps contain music noise a bit but also has the benefit of keeping unwanted noise out of the Studio/Office
        • First jam session in my basement rehearsal space was a success!
          • Despite is playing pretty loud, no ringing ears on our part and the sound didn’t carry outside too much
      • “Adventure” with bathroom flood
      • Some more chromebook crouton tinkering
        • One of my kids accidentally reset the Chromebook due to developer mode screen on startup (my fault, forgot to prep him) 
        • Installed both KDE and Gnome variants of Crouton.
          • KDE was buggy on this particular Chromebook
          • Gnome was just too slow
          • Went back to XFCE which is Crouton’s default and works very well
      • Really debating a new phone purchase, Pixel 4a
        • After 3.5 years of heavy use my OnePlus 3T still holding up well but the charge port is worn out and that is getting annoying
        • Most new phones will support dual sim which is kind of a requirement for me
      • On vacation this week, working on 
        • More basement refinishing
        • Music recording
        • Prep for another Ironshield Brewing gig next weekend

    THE NEWS: 

    SECURITY UPDATE:

    • There wasn’t much Linux centric today, and to keep this discussion episode going with discussion: 
      • How much of a tinfoil hatter are you?
      • What do you do in your life to secure yourself up?
    • Londoner: Proton Drive

    Announcements:

    Our next episode will be Sunday, September 20, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC and 8 pm British Summer Time. Time conversions are available at https://www.timeanddate.com. You can use Austin, Texas as a Central Time reference.

    Wrap-up:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible … 

    • Owen Peery for audio editing
    • Josh for all his work on the website
    • Hobstar for our logo
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • HPR for our Mumble backup
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
    ]]>     full 4615     mintCast 343 – Tinfoil Not Included https://mintcast.org/mintcast-343-tinfoil-not-included/ Wed, 09 Sep 2020 04:08:25 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4610 Then, in the news, we have news from Mint, Debian, and  MX Linux. We also say goodbye to a team member.
    In security, we take a break from the doom and gloom and just talk tinfoil.
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    1:47 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
    42:01 The News
    1:05:00 Security
    1:26:51 Outro

    First up, in our Wanderings, I recorded some how-to’s, Moss has computers raining on him, Joe reads and repairs, Tony Watts jams and tinkers, and Bo and Tony Hughes will be back next episode.

    Then, in the news, we have news from Mint, Debian, and  MX Linux. We also say goodbye to a team member.

    In security, we take a break from the doom and gloom and just talk tinfoil.

    BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • I’ve finally gotten some time to record a couple more how-to’s. Bashtop and Bpytop.
      • Also, I’m fairly current on Full Circle Weekly News again! I plan on doing a two-week episode this week to get current and it feels good.
    • Moss
      • About 2 hours after completing the last episode, I went to plug my speakers back into my desktop, slipped, and somehow shorted out my computer. A new power supply, thanks to Tony Hughes, arrived on Tuesday, and surprise, it was the wrong size. I’m supposed to have a mini ITX machine, and ordered accordingly, but the power supply in the box (and, yes, I should have looked first) was a full sized ATX. 
      • After complaining about that to the Telegram group, Fuzzy shipped me a new tower computer which will blow the socks off what I had. That should get here next Saturday.
      • I went ahead and returned the power supply to Amazon and have ordered the correct power supply from NewEgg, and when I get the old desktop repaired and running, I will find a deserving schoolkid to give it to.
      • On top of that, I went out to visit a friend last night, and came home with a pretty high-end older HP tower computer (Win 7 Home Premium license, early i7 processor). It’s quite dirty right now, so I’ll clean it up, check the specs and whether it runs, and see if I can find someone to give (or sell cheap) it to.
      • I tried using the Pi 4 as my TV machine but could not get my VPN to start, even though it was installed. Mullvad customer support was disappointing, considering how long I have been a customer.
      • So I signed up for a new VPN called Surfshark. If I can get it to work, it will cost about the same for 2 years as I would have paid for 8 months to Mullvad. It’s good when it works, but apparently that’s only on Ubuntu-based systems (a fact they neglected to mention). The Linux app is non-existent, although it has a nice app for Android and anything else. Their tech support was friendly initially, but now they’re falling into patterns of “Well, Linux users don’t want an easy way to run our VPN…”
      • What I haven’t done yet is try Surfshark on the Pi 4. Coming soon.
      • I moved the 1 Tb SSD from my desktop to my laptop last Tuesday night. I started running updates, as it had been about 11 days since these 7 distros had been updated. My Manjaro installation would not load, so I reinstalled it, then installed OpenMandriva on the remaining unused partition. I had both Feren OS and KDE neon which were basically Ubuntu-running-KDE and yearned for more diversity, so I flipped a coin and replaced Feren OS with Ubuntu Unity. I’m way behind on getting all these distros as near equivalent as possible or even evaluating their current status, things have been so much in flux.  I have also installed Surfshark on the four Ubuntu-based distros.
      • I have a new digital watch and fitness tracker. It only cost $7.95 and a two-month wait for it to get here from Szenchen, China. It connects to a phone app and can attach to social media and email but I don’t want that. I have no idea what other data it collects, but I’ve gained 20 pounds since my accident and want some incentive and help to start going the other way again. Besides the time function, it also detects my pulse, blood pressure, and even blood oxygen, as well as my steps. You ease the friction-fit watchband off on one end to expose the USB terminal — yes, you plug the entire watch into a USB port to charge it. A charge seems to last 3-4 days. There are virtually no controls on the watch, everything is run through the app.
      • My unemployment ran out. Not weeks, but dollars. My final check was under $100, so no covid money for Moss this week. On the other hand, I have 3 job possibilities, and it looks as if one of them will go through, although it will be a temporary job. Feast or famine. I’m not completely out of money yet, but it could be a race between that and my first paycheck. I have been encouraged to talk to a lawyer about the fact that I have been getting paid out of Unemployment dollars instead of Worker’s Comp funds, but the covid-19 money received puts a major question mark in that process as that comes only with unemployment money. While the potential fraud was not on my part, I was the beneficiary of it.
      • My mother went back to the hospital after she fell and broke the pin in her hip. They repaired the pin successfully. She has been moved from the hospital to the rehab facility, where she will spend at least a few weeks. She’s 91 now, in case you lost count.
      • We finished reading Blood Rites, the 6th Dresden book, and have started in on Dead Beat.
    • Joe
      • Soulwood series by Faith Hunter,  4 books of 5
        • Same universe as the Jane Yellowrock series.
        • Good series
      • Locke and Key audio drama
        • Based on the comics
        • Well done, easy to follow and interesting
      • Junkyard Pirate by Jamie McFarlane
        • Second book as well
      • Also from Jamie Mcfarlane
        • Wizard in a Witchy World series
      • Ministry of Curiosity (10 books)
        • Good series. Feels a bit generic, nothing really stands out for me
        • Sometimes the books in the series felt like nothing really happened.  Like there was no overriding antagonistic event
      • Suggest some good cyberpunk novels
      • 3D-printed a whole setup for the macro keyboards.  
        • 12 key and it works very well
        • I am very happy with the quality and I may do a few more
        • Using it to control my mic mute button and also have it setup for vlc and docker using auto hotkey functions
        • Still looking for the most comfortable position to mount it
      • Also got some very thin wire .1mm to see if I can bridge the bad spots on that other board so I can have another one.
        • Once I get it working correctly I will 3D print a case for it
        • It is also the wire that I used to run the grounds for all the other keys on the one i printed
      • My water heater started leaking.  Went through a good chunk of my garage and most of my kitchen.  Caught it quickly though and got the water shut off so not much damage.
        • Going through the warranty company to get it fixed. 
        • Warranty company has been somewhat hit or miss over the years so…
        • Cost me a bit over 500 so that is not too bad.
        • Need to build a moisture sensor for it and not sure if I should use an arduino or a Pi.  What do you think?
      • This also meant that I had to shuffle my garage around a couple of times.  Once to get everything off the far wall and once to get everything out of the way so that they could get the new one in.
        • This allowed me to restructure my storage and work area
        • My son helped me figure out where to put some things in order to maximize my space and make it look neater
        • Still have a lot more work to do 
      • I have  an iPod docking station that is going to be my next item to work on.  Looks more like a sound bar.  It turns on and the clock works but no sound comes out no matter what you set the input to.  Gonna be fun taking it apart and seeing where the break is.
      • Revamping my workout
    • Tony Watts
      • Basement finishing continues
        • Added some insulation to the ceiling.  This helps contain music noise a bit but also has the benefit of keeping unwanted noise out of the Studio/Office
        • First jam session in my basement rehearsal space was a success!
          • Despite is playing pretty loud, no ringing ears on our part and the sound didn’t carry outside too much
      • “Adventure” with bathroom flood
      • Some more chromebook crouton tinkering
        • One of my kids accidentally reset the Chromebook due to developer mode screen on startup (my fault, forgot to prep him) 
        • Installed both KDE and Gnome variants of Crouton.
          • KDE was buggy on this particular Chromebook
          • Gnome was just too slow
          • Went back to XFCE which is Crouton’s default and works very well
      • Really debating a new phone purchase, Pixel 4a
        • After 3.5 years of heavy use my OnePlus 3T still holding up well but the charge port is worn out and that is getting annoying
        • Most new phones will support dual sim which is kind of a requirement for me
      • On vacation this week, working on 
        • More basement refinishing
        • Music recording
        • Prep for another Ironshield Brewing gig next weekend

    THE NEWS: 

    SECURITY UPDATE:

    • There wasn’t much Linux centric today, and to keep this discussion episode going with discussion: 
      • How much of a tinfoil hatter are you?
      • What do you do in your life to secure yourself up?
    • Londoner: Proton Drive

    Announcements:

    Our next episode will be Sunday, September 20, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC and 8 pm British Summer Time. Time conversions are available at https://www.timeanddate.com. You can use Austin, Texas as a Central Time reference.

    Wrap-up:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible … 

    • Owen Peery for audio editing
    • Josh for all his work on the website
    • Hobstar for our logo
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • HPR for our Mumble backup
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
    ]]>     full 4610     mintCast 340 – Unit of Measurement (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-340-unit-of-measurement-mp3/ Wed, 29 Jul 2020 04:57:59 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4552 Then, in our news, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix changes course, Android comes to a real phone, Blender needs blenders, and more
    In security, we talk Twitter
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    1:41 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
    53:01 The News
    1:13:28 Security
    1:20:12 Outro

    First up, in our Wanderings, Jason prints a masterpiece, I get knee deep in Mint, Tony Hughes becomes a journalist, Moss has new toys, Joe springs a leak, and Tony Watts is rockin’ in the free world.

    Then, in our news, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix changes course, Android comes to a real phone, Blender needs blenders, and more

    In security, we talk Twitter

    BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Jason
      • Trying a large life-size-ish 3D print of an old sculpt I made
      • Been going a bit analog recently with carving in wood. I was gifted some large chunks of cherry and walnut, so I’ve been trying to do interesting things with those.
      • Related to carving and 3D printing, I designed (in Blender!) and printed a mount for carving wooden and horn rings. Did that a while ago, but some folks were asking for more information about it, so I recorded an episode about that on my own podcast that I relaunched a month or so ago, the Open Source Creative Podcast (not-so-shameless plug). Got the thing posted up on Thingiverse for anyone interested.
      • Got a pretty cool audio interface for recording, but then realized that my trusty Røde Smartlav+ won’t properly connect to it without chaining a series of adapters, which I’d much rather not do.
      • Been digging a bit into various web technology stuff
        • Flask and all kinds of crazy Python stuff for databases. Plus that also means playing with Javascript and learning what a REST API is and how to make one
        • Self-hosted analytics with Goatcounter
        • Self-hosted mailing list with phpList
        • Migrated all of my websites to static sites generated by Hugo
        • Messing with getting SSL to play nice on subdomains with different hosting
    • Leo
      • Video capture card + some Raspberry Pi goodness. Plan on adding a few videos to the Terminal Tricks channel about Raspberry Pi’s. Not sure yet what I want to do, but now I have the things I need to do it! I’m open to suggestions.
      • Really putting LM20 through its paces. After a few hiccups I mentioned on the last show, stable stable stable.
      • Got a dock for my t450s! It’s great, except… Droidcam dies on me if I use the powered USB port on the dock. Have to go straight to the laptop’s powered port. Easy fix.
      • The BDLL I miss is the BDLL where they talk about my real, actual profession…

     

    • Tony H
      • Around the end of last year beginning of this I started to write a series on podcast production in Linux for Full Circle Magazine and Ronnie accepted it, due to publishing timings the first in this series is to be in the next issue of the magazine. I have written the first 3 installments, and in the process of starting to write the 4th part.   
      • I have been doing little group restorations of some of my Matchbox castings and doing 4 or 5 of the same casting at the same time. This week I did 5 Lamborghini Marzal’s and was quite pleased with the results. 
      • Myself and Moss recorded Episode 015 of Distrohoppers Digest and the show went out on Friday. Apologies to Moss as his audio on the edit did not come out the best it could, but I freely admit to not being a professional sound engineer and don’t always get it completely right on the edits.
      • On Friday night I did a fresh install of Mint 20 Mate on the Distrohoppers Laptop with the intention of this being my review for what will be the September show, as I will be away and not have sufficient bandwidth to record and edit while away from ‘Studio’ A here in Blackpool.  
    • Moss
      • I’m probably reviewing Ubuntu Unity for Episode 016 of Distrohoppers’. I have had a brief but fun conversation with its dev, Rudra Saraswat. I also haven’t yet decided what to burn to SD to run my Pi 4 on, and am waiting for Rudra to port UUR to the Pi, which he is working on, but am still considering Ubuntu MATE and Manjaro RPi versions.
      • We recorded Episode 015 of Distrohoppers’ Digest on this past Wednesday and had a grand time doing it. It should be available now. Episode 012 has gone over 400 downloads, our 8th episode to do so. 
      • I sold a laptop to one of our listeners. From the proceeds of that sale, I purchased a few things: A new microphone, which you should be hearing now. New SSDs for my desktop and laptop (1 Tb for the desktop, 512 Gb for the laptop), which are installed and will give me more room to install even more distros! I still had half the money from the sale to put into savings against my unemployment period or continued savings should I get a job soon.
      • Yes, I now have 200 distros on each of my computers. No, it’s not that bad. I have 6 distro partitions on my laptop, 1 of which is unused at present, and 8 on my desktop, 5 of which are unused. I did things the easy way on my desktop, cloning the old drive to the new one and then adding partitions, and the hard way on the laptop, as Clonezilla refused to load on my laptop, completely partitioning the disk using GPartEd and doing 5 installations in one night. Thanks to USB 3.1 and the magic of SSDs, I did all of that in 5.25 hours, bringing each distro to a complete install and upgrade with a few programs removed and a couple things added, about 85% complete. Since then, I have Mint, Bodhi, and Ubuntu Unity Edition up to about 98%, I got my printer installed but I’m still needing to configure some programs and tweak one or two things. OpenMandriva and Gecko are still pretty much in the 85-90% range of completion due to lack of time.
      • I talked with Rudra Saraswat, dev of Ubuntu Unity Edition, UbuntuEd, and a couple other new distros, and found he didn’t really have a good mirror, so I hooked him up with my old friend and listener Firecat, and now he does. Always good to make connections in the community.
      • We actually did get one or two chapters of Dresden files read since last show, which brings us to Joe.
    • Joe
      • New Dresden Files book Peace Talks came out.  I enjoyed it but it felt incomplete and despite the several years since the last book it still felt like the book was very rushed and incomplete
        • This is likely because the book was split into two and the next book will be out in a couple of months
      • Started reading the full Drizzt collection by Salvatore which is 36 books.  I have attempted to read the whole collection before and I usually only make it about half way through.  But with the completion of the most recent series I really want to give it another go.
      • My freezer out in the garage had an issue.  An operator issue.  It was still full of ice which then melted.  
        • Yeah that sucks but what is worse is that the water that leaked out was absorbed by the box next to the fridge which happened to be one of my double boxes of comic books.  
        • About half of the comics in it were ruined despite being bagged
      • My server gave up the ghost finally after years of limping along so I had to build a new one
        • Ryzen 5 3600 
          • Would have preferred the 3600g but that one is not out yet.  
        • B450m matx motherboard
        • Cube case
        • Rx 560 graphics card
          • It will eventually get upgraded
        • They gave me the incorrect power supply at Micro Center so I had to make do with another one.
          • Still need to get this taken back
        • G.SKILL 16GB 2X8GB DDR4 3200 KIT
        • I was however able to use the old operating system setup from the ssd out of the old system
        • After I reinstalled plex all the old library setup was in place and working 
        • Same with Docker, once it was installed my old images showed up and I was able to pick up everything where it was before
        • Some of the Icons images are not as they should be but it is really not an issue for me. After the upgrade from 18 to 19 to 20
        • Resilio Sync however I had to go through and start from scratch
          • Still some small issues with permissions but I am working on it
        • Have started using psensor to keep track of temperatures
      • Purchased a dock for the 7130 to test out some of the functions because I had read that the HDMI and displayport output did not work on Linux.
        • It worked fine right out of the box.  I thought it may have been displaylink which eats a lot of processor in Linux but in checking it is not installed on my tablet
          • For those that don’t know, Displaylink is the USB-to-video output technology that most adapters and docks and port replicators use
          • Very optimized for Windows and while they do make a driver for Linux it has a lot of overhead
        • So this could very easily serve as a convergence device.  I will be working on a setup for it
        • The dock costs a bit more than I would like but I am looking for ways around that as it is the power supply for it that costs the most.
      • Ordered a lot of as-is ThinkPad USB 3.0 docks for 25 dollars
        • Should have been here before this weekend so I would have something to work on but got delayed
        • I would need to buy power supplies for them separately and those would be about 10 dollars apiece but I don’t want to order any until I know how many I will get fixed
        • Should be able to sell for around 40 dollars each.  Which is less than the local area has been selling hubs and docks and port replicators for
      • I have to install Windows on 3 devices in the next couple of weeks
    • Tony W
      • New (to me) guitar amp!  Boss Katana 100W
        • Built-in amp “modeling” + every guitar effect you can think of 
        • Bought used, 100W version with GA-FC footswitch and EV-30 expression pedal included
        • Boss tone studio software makes this really powerful (but unfortunately Windows only) 
      • Reworked hard drives in studio computer
        • One more new 120GB SSD
        • Total of 3 drives (2 X SSD for “filthy dual booting” + 1 spinning for storage)
        • Used Ventoy for the Windows install
        • Played with a few distros via Ventoy startup USB
          • PopOS, manjaro, others
      • Bought a chromebook (Acer CB-431) for my kid’s school, 
      • Would have been a used thinkpad if it was for me, but seems good for use I got it for (Thinkpad T430/T440/T450/X220/X230 all still plentiful at good prices on ebay) 
        • Linux Beta
          • Linux virtual machine within ChromeOS
          • Turn it on in settings, allocate how many GB.  It installs, drops you in terminal (tony76tfg@penguin)
          • It’s Debian 10 Buster underneath
          • VLC was already installed
      • Music gigs 
        • Had a good streak of about 5 gigs over 6 weeks, slowing down a bit now (only one each in Jul/Aug)
      • Lots of grilling and barbecuing!  
        • New grill, char griller Akorn (similar to big green egg, cheaper)

    THE NEWS

    SECURITY UPDATE

    Announcements:

    The next show will be Sunday, the 9th of August at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

    Wrap-up:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible … 

    • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
    • Josh for all his work on the website
    • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
    ]]>     full 4552     mintCast 340 – Unit of Measurement https://mintcast.org/mintcast-340-unit-of-measurement/ Wed, 29 Jul 2020 04:41:02 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4547 Then, in our news, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix changes course, Android comes to a real phone, Blender needs blenders, and more
    In security, we talk Twitter
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    1:41 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
    53:01 The News
    1:13:28 Security
    1:20:12 Outro

    First up, in our Wanderings, Jason prints a masterpiece, I get knee deep in Mint, Tony Hughes becomes a journalist, Moss has new toys, Joe springs a leak, and Tony Watts is rockin’ in the free world.

    Then, in our news, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix changes course, Android comes to a real phone, Blender needs blenders, and more

    In security, we talk Twitter

    BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Jason
      • Trying a large life-size-ish 3D print of an old sculpt I made
      • Been going a bit analog recently with carving in wood. I was gifted some large chunks of cherry and walnut, so I’ve been trying to do interesting things with those.
      • Related to carving and 3D printing, I designed (in Blender!) and printed a mount for carving wooden and horn rings. Did that a while ago, but some folks were asking for more information about it, so I recorded an episode about that on my own podcast that I relaunched a month or so ago, the Open Source Creative Podcast (not-so-shameless plug). Got the thing posted up on Thingiverse for anyone interested.
      • Got a pretty cool audio interface for recording, but then realized that my trusty Røde Smartlav+ won’t properly connect to it without chaining a series of adapters, which I’d much rather not do.
      • Been digging a bit into various web technology stuff
        • Flask and all kinds of crazy Python stuff for databases. Plus that also means playing with Javascript and learning what a REST API is and how to make one
        • Self-hosted analytics with Goatcounter
        • Self-hosted mailing list with phpList
        • Migrated all of my websites to static sites generated by Hugo
        • Messing with getting SSL to play nice on subdomains with different hosting
    • Leo
      • Video capture card + some Raspberry Pi goodness. Plan on adding a few videos to the Terminal Tricks channel about Raspberry Pi’s. Not sure yet what I want to do, but now I have the things I need to do it! I’m open to suggestions.
      • Really putting LM20 through its paces. After a few hiccups I mentioned on the last show, stable stable stable.
      • Got a dock for my t450s! It’s great, except… Droidcam dies on me if I use the powered USB port on the dock. Have to go straight to the laptop’s powered port. Easy fix.
      • The BDLL I miss is the BDLL where they talk about my real, actual profession…

     

    • Tony H
      • Around the end of last year beginning of this I started to write a series on podcast production in Linux for Full Circle Magazine and Ronnie accepted it, due to publishing timings the first in this series is to be in the next issue of the magazine. I have written the first 3 installments, and in the process of starting to write the 4th part.   
      • I have been doing little group restorations of some of my Matchbox castings and doing 4 or 5 of the same casting at the same time. This week I did 5 Lamborghini Marzal’s and was quite pleased with the results. 
      • Myself and Moss recorded Episode 015 of Distrohoppers Digest and the show went out on Friday. Apologies to Moss as his audio on the edit did not come out the best it could, but I freely admit to not being a professional sound engineer and don’t always get it completely right on the edits.
      • On Friday night I did a fresh install of Mint 20 Mate on the Distrohoppers Laptop with the intention of this being my review for what will be the September show, as I will be away and not have sufficient bandwidth to record and edit while away from ‘Studio’ A here in Blackpool.  
    • Moss
      • I’m probably reviewing Ubuntu Unity for Episode 016 of Distrohoppers’. I have had a brief but fun conversation with its dev, Rudra Saraswat. I also haven’t yet decided what to burn to SD to run my Pi 4 on, and am waiting for Rudra to port UUR to the Pi, which he is working on, but am still considering Ubuntu MATE and Manjaro RPi versions.
      • We recorded Episode 015 of Distrohoppers’ Digest on this past Wednesday and had a grand time doing it. It should be available now. Episode 012 has gone over 400 downloads, our 8th episode to do so. 
      • I sold a laptop to one of our listeners. From the proceeds of that sale, I purchased a few things: A new microphone, which you should be hearing now. New SSDs for my desktop and laptop (1 Tb for the desktop, 512 Gb for the laptop), which are installed and will give me more room to install even more distros! I still had half the money from the sale to put into savings against my unemployment period or continued savings should I get a job soon.
      • Yes, I now have 200 distros on each of my computers. No, it’s not that bad. I have 6 distro partitions on my laptop, 1 of which is unused at present, and 8 on my desktop, 5 of which are unused. I did things the easy way on my desktop, cloning the old drive to the new one and then adding partitions, and the hard way on the laptop, as Clonezilla refused to load on my laptop, completely partitioning the disk using GPartEd and doing 5 installations in one night. Thanks to USB 3.1 and the magic of SSDs, I did all of that in 5.25 hours, bringing each distro to a complete install and upgrade with a few programs removed and a couple things added, about 85% complete. Since then, I have Mint, Bodhi, and Ubuntu Unity Edition up to about 98%, I got my printer installed but I’m still needing to configure some programs and tweak one or two things. OpenMandriva and Gecko are still pretty much in the 85-90% range of completion due to lack of time.
      • I talked with Rudra Saraswat, dev of Ubuntu Unity Edition, UbuntuEd, and a couple other new distros, and found he didn’t really have a good mirror, so I hooked him up with my old friend and listener Firecat, and now he does. Always good to make connections in the community.
      • We actually did get one or two chapters of Dresden files read since last show, which brings us to Joe.
    • Joe
      • New Dresden Files book Peace Talks came out.  I enjoyed it but it felt incomplete and despite the several years since the last book it still felt like the book was very rushed and incomplete
        • This is likely because the book was split into two and the next book will be out in a couple of months
      • Started reading the full Drizzt collection by Salvatore which is 36 books.  I have attempted to read the whole collection before and I usually only make it about half way through.  But with the completion of the most recent series I really want to give it another go.
      • My freezer out in the garage had an issue.  An operator issue.  It was still full of ice which then melted.  
        • Yeah that sucks but what is worse is that the water that leaked out was absorbed by the box next to the fridge which happened to be one of my double boxes of comic books.  
        • About half of the comics in it were ruined despite being bagged
      • My server gave up the ghost finally after years of limping along so I had to build a new one
        • Ryzen 5 3600 
          • Would have preferred the 3600g but that one is not out yet.  
        • B450m matx motherboard
        • Cube case
        • Rx 560 graphics card
          • It will eventually get upgraded
        • They gave me the incorrect power supply at Micro Center so I had to make do with another one.
          • Still need to get this taken back
        • G.SKILL 16GB 2X8GB DDR4 3200 KIT
        • I was however able to use the old operating system setup from the ssd out of the old system
        • After I reinstalled plex all the old library setup was in place and working 
        • Same with Docker, once it was installed my old images showed up and I was able to pick up everything where it was before
        • Some of the Icons images are not as they should be but it is really not an issue for me. After the upgrade from 18 to 19 to 20
        • Resilio Sync however I had to go through and start from scratch
          • Still some small issues with permissions but I am working on it
        • Have started using psensor to keep track of temperatures
      • Purchased a dock for the 7130 to test out some of the functions because I had read that the HDMI and displayport output did not work on Linux.
        • It worked fine right out of the box.  I thought it may have been displaylink which eats a lot of processor in Linux but in checking it is not installed on my tablet
          • For those that don’t know, Displaylink is the USB-to-video output technology that most adapters and docks and port replicators use
          • Very optimized for Windows and while they do make a driver for Linux it has a lot of overhead
        • So this could very easily serve as a convergence device.  I will be working on a setup for it
        • The dock costs a bit more than I would like but I am looking for ways around that as it is the power supply for it that costs the most.
      • Ordered a lot of as-is ThinkPad USB 3.0 docks for 25 dollars
        • Should have been here before this weekend so I would have something to work on but got delayed
        • I would need to buy power supplies for them separately and those would be about 10 dollars apiece but I don’t want to order any until I know how many I will get fixed
        • Should be able to sell for around 40 dollars each.  Which is less than the local area has been selling hubs and docks and port replicators for
      • I have to install Windows on 3 devices in the next couple of weeks
    • Tony W
      • New (to me) guitar amp!  Boss Katana 100W
        • Built-in amp “modeling” + every guitar effect you can think of 
        • Bought used, 100W version with GA-FC footswitch and EV-30 expression pedal included
        • Boss tone studio software makes this really powerful (but unfortunately Windows only) 
      • Reworked hard drives in studio computer
        • One more new 120GB SSD
        • Total of 3 drives (2 X SSD for “filthy dual booting” + 1 spinning for storage)
        • Used Ventoy for the Windows install
        • Played with a few distros via Ventoy startup USB
          • PopOS, manjaro, others
      • Bought a chromebook (Acer CB-431) for my kid’s school, 
      • Would have been a used thinkpad if it was for me, but seems good for use I got it for (Thinkpad T430/T440/T450/X220/X230 all still plentiful at good prices on ebay) 
        • Linux Beta
          • Linux virtual machine within ChromeOS
          • Turn it on in settings, allocate how many GB.  It installs, drops you in terminal (tony76tfg@penguin)
          • It’s Debian 10 Buster underneath
          • VLC was already installed
      • Music gigs 
        • Had a good streak of about 5 gigs over 6 weeks, slowing down a bit now (only one each in Jul/Aug)
      • Lots of grilling and barbecuing!  
        • New grill, char griller Akorn (similar to big green egg, cheaper)

    THE NEWS

    SECURITY UPDATE

    Announcements:

    The next show will be Sunday, the 9th of August at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

    Wrap-up:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible … 

    • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
    • Josh for all his work on the website
    • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
    ]]>     full 4547     mintCast 327 – The Mozilla Thrilla https://mintcast.org/mintcast-327-the-mozilla-thrilla/ Wed, 29 Jan 2020 08:02:54 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4152 Then in our news a new Wine, GParted, Edge and Yaru theme for Ubuntu. The Pinephone ships and Firefox runs into issues.
    Finally, in security, we talk password leads and Mozilla addon bans.
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    First up, in our Wanderings, I follow in Tony H’s footsteps and paint, Tony H upgrades a laptop and attends another LUG, Josh returns, Moss meets a mintCast listener, Joe listens to more books and learns about Cockpit, and Tony Watts edits video and works on his Studio.

    Then in our news a new Wine, GParted, Edge and Yaru theme for Ubuntu. The Pinephone ships and Firefox runs into issues.

    Finally, in security, we talk password leads and Mozilla addon bans.

    BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • DnD Mini painting! D:
    • Tony H
      • Upgraded a Windows 8.1 Sony VAIO i5 laptop to Windows 10 and after the upgrade replaced the spinner with a 120Gig SSD and upgraded the RAM from 4 to 6Gb and this now boots in under 10 seconds. Even I was impressed with the performance improvements, I’m sure part of the issue was that over time the Win8 install had built up a load of windows bloat which slowed it down, but the person who asked me to do this will be very happy to have a workable laptop back. Listening to the first part of the HPR new years eve/day marathon event which was released this week, if you want to know what me and Popey talked about, have a listen.   
      • Went to the LUG and talking to a new member who has just moved to the area and we seem to have trod a similar path with Linux, starting with Ubuntu and migrating to Mint with the advent of the Unity DE. Good to see new people coming to the LUG. 
      • Oh and this week at the LUG I got given some sourdough starter which I have christened ‘Fred’ well it is a living organism lol. So this week sometime I will be trying to bake a sourdough loaf, may have to do a little YouTube research beforehand to make sure I’m doing it right. I’ve made many loaves before but this will be the first time making sourdough. Wish me luck.    
      • And I can’t forget the Matchbox cars, had a lucky flea-Bay find and picked up some very nice models that can go straight into the collection for around a £1 each. I’m sure I can get a lot more than that if I ever want to part with them, but for now they will be staying put. Considering having a stall at the next swap meet, to try and move on some of my many repeats either sell or swap.
    • Moss
      • So I missed the Thinkpad Lovefest last episode. I had a great time at GAFilk (as I always do, which is why I keep going year upon year), but the resultant video did not sound great. I’m waiting for better audio to patch in, foretelling my first go with KDEnlive.
      • At least you didn’t decide to replace me permanently with Alan Pope. My first Thinkpad was purchased only 5 or 6 years ago, a X130e, which later I replaced with a T430 and sent the X130e to my fiancee (now wife). After about a year, she decided she wanted a T430, so we sold the X130e and bought her one. She still has hers; I just sold mine to listener Dale Miracle at a price which was definitely to my benefit, and we got dinner along with it. Thanks, Dale!
      • I’ve been playing Musical Distros on my machines, and somehow managed to have Mint Cinnamon and KDE neon on both computers. I need to find some more distros to play with.  I looked at Nitrux but it doesn’t look like you actually install it. 
      • The problem I was having with Feren OS on my Galago Pro 2, which to date has only shown itself when using only with Kmines and KMahjongg, was not a Feren problem, it was something between the Galago video system and KDE. I had the same issue with KDE neon. And while the blocks of video dropout are white in regular mode, they are dark grey in Dark Mode, which is really something. I haven’t tried Kubuntu to further investigate, but the Galago Pro was reported to have been pretty well-used when listener Jackie Moore sent it to me so it could just be wear.
      • To the people in our Telegram group who seem to think I have the record for the most distros on a machine: one of my MeWe friends has 11. And I have done the math: if I allocated a generous 25 Gb for each distro, I could easily fit 50 distros on my Galago Pro 2; however, thinking about having to update all those distros, not to mention navigating the GRUB menu. I think I’ll stick with 7.
      • I’m trying to talk Tony into doing Peppermint 10 Respin for Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 010 on February 5th.  I tried it and was driven bonkers by the peppermint candy icon in the taskbar. I hate doing negative reviews, especially for good distros, so I’ll get Tony to do a positive one, if he’s up for it. I believe I’ll do Feren OS again, it’s a whole new distro with KDE and what he has done is simply amazing. Our episode download numbers keep increasing, with currently 2 episodes over 500 downloads and 3 more over 400 out of 9 episodes. For as niche-y as we are, those are nice numbers.
      • I replaced Ubuntu Budgie 19.10 with Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix, because that’s what we’re doing this episode. I have no need for two versions of Ubuntu 19.10, but I will miss Budgie. 
      • My wife and I have finished reading Storm Front and got a $1.99 deal on Fool Moon (Dresden Files series), so I’m reading that to my wife now. Apparently these books are not in Kindle Unlimited — which beggars the use of the word “unlimited”, but there you have it. Our flying the skies with Temeraire continues to be on hold.
      • The Rehab facility sent my mom home again just yesterday. Hope she can stay there.
    • Josh
      • Back from Australia
      • Problems with Grandad’s PC (He needs a new one)
      • Editing photos
      • EduBlocks draggable video tutorials
      • Much less of me on the show due to exams in 14 weeks
    • Joe
      • Listened to some good books
      • NOS4A2 by Joe Hill who is the son of Stephen King
        • Really good book
        • You can tell that it was heavily influenced by King
        • Lots of references to Kings works
        • Very detailed but still easy to follow. 
        • Highly recommend and I will be trying a few more books from the same author.  Maybe find out if he has written any series
      • Listened to the Avalon Chronicles which are a continuation of the Hellequin novels
        • Well read but complex enough that for the first read through I needed to drop the speed from 3x to 2x
        • I like the following of new characters while still having the cameos from the previous series to tie it all together.
        • Book 2 and 3 jumped around a lot
      • Started the Lost Fleet series so I could get the beginning of the story.
        • Really having read the second series of this I am having trouble getting through because it is so similar that I feel like I have already read it.
        • Don’t know if I will finish the series any time soon but I will keep it in my library
      • Listening to the Daniel Faust novels again
      • Was hoping to listen to the Demon Squad novels but my copy is gone and I have not found a new one yet
      • Also Yancy Lazarous novels but I was able to find another copy.  So it will be next on my list
      • Started using voice aloud reader which was recommended to me by one of my co-hosts on the linux lug cast.
        • I have never before liked text-aloud books, but using one of the online voice reader options it has worked out very well.
        • So far I have read the 6th book from the Garrett P.I. novels and the first book of the Aubry Knight trilogy
          • Both series are available as ebooks but not audiobooks
          • Both are very good books that I always wanted to get in audio
          • It is not perfect but it is much better than it was 10 years ago
      • Haven’t done much with PI’s in a while and all I have left at this time is some Pi 1’s and a couple of zero w’s
        • For a warm up I plan on setting up a zero w as a pi hole
          • Used raspbian lite
        • I would like to order a Pi 4 and I will get around to it
        • Also looking hard at some physical switches on the GPIO to run scripts
        • But I may just use a usb numpad to start off with.
        • Also looking at 7 inch hdmi touch screens for the pi’s 
      • Thanks Popey for coming on the show last time.  Also thanks for the suggestion on cockpit
        • It helped me easily diagnose the problems on my server.  Yes it all could have been found elsewhere but this tool made it easy with everything consolidated.  I was also able to use the interface to find the issue while I was several miles away at the office.  
        • Turns out one of my 4tb hdds has some bad sectors.  Sadly it is the partition that has all my configurations for docker and all my audiobooks.  
        • Which explains the corrupt audiobook files that I have been seeing. 
        • Ordered an 8tb to replace it.  
      • 8Tb HDD was really easy to set up.  Didn’t have to jump through all the large hard drive hoops that I used to have to.
        • Setup in disks and then use rsync to copy everything over 24 hours to copy 4tb of data.  Power down and power back up to make sure the data is still there and the partition is accessible.
        • Use disks again to change the mount name to what the old drive was(one of them the one for docker) and change the mount point on the old drive
        • Restart the machine and make sure that docker is working then point plex to the new drive location.  
        • Do a full shutdown with no power for a few minutes
          • Yes I’m paranoid
        • It is all working.  I now feel comfortable taking the 4Tb out Although I may wait a few days before doing anything with it.  
      • Installed android x86 on the 7140 which may spend some time as my testing machine
        • I did not want to wipe out my hard drive so I attempted to install it to a USB stick
        • I think my powered usb hub or the cable to it was simply not up to the task
        • So I wiped my drive and ran it there.  
        • It was nice being able to play some of the android games on full screen and install all the apps that I usually use on my phone
        • But the sound did not work on either the speakers or the 3.5mm jack but did work over bluetooth so kinda usable 
        • The only issue I had was recovering when it attempted to sleep since the 7140 does not support that.  The touchpad and wifi would both stop working although I could fix the wifi I could not fix the touchpad without a full restart
      • So I wiped the drive again and attempted to install ubuntu cinnamon.  Invalid partition table every time.
        • Will talk about that in the innards but I did get it fixed
      • Also am attempting to install android x86 in virtualbox on my 7130
        • Need to increase the resources for it but it does seem to be working
      • May have to buy a larger/faster drive for the 7140 
      • Dell Venue 8 Pro woes
        • Spent a couple of days trying to get that set back up
        • Couldn’t install anything with cinnamon
        • Ended up install Mint Mate to replace mint xfce
        • Tried all the old audio fixes and could not get the audio working
        • Surprisingly though the Bluetooth is now working
      • Copyq from the going linux podcast
    • Tony W
      • More progress on digitizing 8mm video
        • Located all of the cables for camcorder
        • VLC did capture both audio and video streams, after selecting video camera as source (vs analog TV as used previously per instruction in a reddit or something)
        • Resulting video files from VLC capture are HUGE.  Uncompressed AVI format
        • Essentially the process is to capture audio/video, then convert the raw uncompressed files to MP4 etc (I will use Handbrake for this)
      • I will be doing some work on my home studio in the basement very soon
        • Drywall and insulation, framing around ducts and pipes, carpet…
        • Need permit from county
        • Planning to host band practice at my house for yet another band project
      • Have been enjoying some of the basic features of Plex I had somehow managed to avoid to this point
        • Bought the android app
        • Casting to chromecasts in the house
        • Added user accts for the kids – gives control over BOTH libraries and ratings restriction

    THE NEWS:

    SECURITY UPDATE:

    Announcements:

    • Our Next Episode will be live Feb 9, 2020. 2PM CST, 8PM UTC

    Wrap-up:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible … 

    • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
    ]]>     full 1:09:00 4152     mintCast 327 – The Mozilla Thrilla (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-327-the-mozilla-thrilla-mp3/ Wed, 29 Jan 2020 07:40:07 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4150 Then in our news a new Wine, GParted, Edge and Yaru theme for Ubuntu. The Pinephone ships and Firefox runs into issues.
    Finally, in security, we talk password leads and Mozilla addon bans.
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    First up, in our Wanderings, I follow in Tony H’s footsteps and paint, Tony H upgrades a laptop and attends another LUG, Josh returns, Moss meets a mintCast listener, Joe listens to more books and learns about Cockpit, and Tony Watts edits video and works on his Studio.

    Then in our news a new Wine, GParted, Edge and Yaru theme for Ubuntu. The Pinephone ships and Firefox runs into issues.

    Finally, in security, we talk password leads and Mozilla addon bans.

    BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • DnD Mini painting! D:
    • Tony H
      • Upgraded a Windows 8.1 Sony VAIO i5 laptop to Windows 10 and after the upgrade replaced the spinner with a 120Gig SSD and upgraded the RAM from 4 to 6Gb and this now boots in under 10 seconds. Even I was impressed with the performance improvements, I’m sure part of the issue was that over time the Win8 install had built up a load of windows bloat which slowed it down, but the person who asked me to do this will be very happy to have a workable laptop back. Listening to the first part of the HPR new years eve/day marathon event which was released this week, if you want to know what me and Popey talked about, have a listen.   
      • Went to the LUG and talking to a new member who has just moved to the area and we seem to have trod a similar path with Linux, starting with Ubuntu and migrating to Mint with the advent of the Unity DE. Good to see new people coming to the LUG. 
      • Oh and this week at the LUG I got given some sourdough starter which I have christened ‘Fred’ well it is a living organism lol. So this week sometime I will be trying to bake a sourdough loaf, may have to do a little YouTube research beforehand to make sure I’m doing it right. I’ve made many loaves before but this will be the first time making sourdough. Wish me luck.    
      • And I can’t forget the Matchbox cars, had a lucky flea-Bay find and picked up some very nice models that can go straight into the collection for around a £1 each. I’m sure I can get a lot more than that if I ever want to part with them, but for now they will be staying put. Considering having a stall at the next swap meet, to try and move on some of my many repeats either sell or swap.
    • Moss
      • So I missed the Thinkpad Lovefest last episode. I had a great time at GAFilk (as I always do, which is why I keep going year upon year), but the resultant video did not sound great. I’m waiting for better audio to patch in, foretelling my first go with KDEnlive.
      • At least you didn’t decide to replace me permanently with Alan Pope. My first Thinkpad was purchased only 5 or 6 years ago, a X130e, which later I replaced with a T430 and sent the X130e to my fiancee (now wife). After about a year, she decided she wanted a T430, so we sold the X130e and bought her one. She still has hers; I just sold mine to listener Dale Miracle at a price which was definitely to my benefit, and we got dinner along with it. Thanks, Dale!
      • I’ve been playing Musical Distros on my machines, and somehow managed to have Mint Cinnamon and KDE neon on both computers. I need to find some more distros to play with.  I looked at Nitrux but it doesn’t look like you actually install it. 
      • The problem I was having with Feren OS on my Galago Pro 2, which to date has only shown itself when using only with Kmines and KMahjongg, was not a Feren problem, it was something between the Galago video system and KDE. I had the same issue with KDE neon. And while the blocks of video dropout are white in regular mode, they are dark grey in Dark Mode, which is really something. I haven’t tried Kubuntu to further investigate, but the Galago Pro was reported to have been pretty well-used when listener Jackie Moore sent it to me so it could just be wear.
      • To the people in our Telegram group who seem to think I have the record for the most distros on a machine: one of my MeWe friends has 11. And I have done the math: if I allocated a generous 25 Gb for each distro, I could easily fit 50 distros on my Galago Pro 2; however, thinking about having to update all those distros, not to mention navigating the GRUB menu. I think I’ll stick with 7.
      • I’m trying to talk Tony into doing Peppermint 10 Respin for Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 010 on February 5th.  I tried it and was driven bonkers by the peppermint candy icon in the taskbar. I hate doing negative reviews, especially for good distros, so I’ll get Tony to do a positive one, if he’s up for it. I believe I’ll do Feren OS again, it’s a whole new distro with KDE and what he has done is simply amazing. Our episode download numbers keep increasing, with currently 2 episodes over 500 downloads and 3 more over 400 out of 9 episodes. For as niche-y as we are, those are nice numbers.
      • I replaced Ubuntu Budgie 19.10 with Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix, because that’s what we’re doing this episode. I have no need for two versions of Ubuntu 19.10, but I will miss Budgie. 
      • My wife and I have finished reading Storm Front and got a $1.99 deal on Fool Moon (Dresden Files series), so I’m reading that to my wife now. Apparently these books are not in Kindle Unlimited — which beggars the use of the word “unlimited”, but there you have it. Our flying the skies with Temeraire continues to be on hold.
      • The Rehab facility sent my mom home again just yesterday. Hope she can stay there.
    • Josh
      • Back from Australia
      • Problems with Grandad’s PC (He needs a new one)
      • Editing photos
      • EduBlocks draggable video tutorials
      • Much less of me on the show due to exams in 14 weeks
    • Joe
      • Listened to some good books
      • NOS4A2 by Joe Hill who is the son of Stephen King
        • Really good book
        • You can tell that it was heavily influenced by King
        • Lots of references to Kings works
        • Very detailed but still easy to follow. 
        • Highly recommend and I will be trying a few more books from the same author.  Maybe find out if he has written any series
      • Listened to the Avalon Chronicles which are a continuation of the Hellequin novels
        • Well read but complex enough that for the first read through I needed to drop the speed from 3x to 2x
        • I like the following of new characters while still having the cameos from the previous series to tie it all together.
        • Book 2 and 3 jumped around a lot
      • Started the Lost Fleet series so I could get the beginning of the story.
        • Really having read the second series of this I am having trouble getting through because it is so similar that I feel like I have already read it.
        • Don’t know if I will finish the series any time soon but I will keep it in my library
      • Listening to the Daniel Faust novels again
      • Was hoping to listen to the Demon Squad novels but my copy is gone and I have not found a new one yet
      • Also Yancy Lazarous novels but I was able to find another copy.  So it will be next on my list
      • Started using voice aloud reader which was recommended to me by one of my co-hosts on the linux lug cast.
        • I have never before liked text-aloud books, but using one of the online voice reader options it has worked out very well.
        • So far I have read the 6th book from the Garrett P.I. novels and the first book of the Aubry Knight trilogy
          • Both series are available as ebooks but not audiobooks
          • Both are very good books that I always wanted to get in audio
          • It is not perfect but it is much better than it was 10 years ago
      • Haven’t done much with PI’s in a while and all I have left at this time is some Pi 1’s and a couple of zero w’s
        • For a warm up I plan on setting up a zero w as a pi hole
          • Used raspbian lite
        • I would like to order a Pi 4 and I will get around to it
        • Also looking hard at some physical switches on the GPIO to run scripts
        • But I may just use a usb numpad to start off with.
        • Also looking at 7 inch hdmi touch screens for the pi’s 
      • Thanks Popey for coming on the show last time.  Also thanks for the suggestion on cockpit
        • It helped me easily diagnose the problems on my server.  Yes it all could have been found elsewhere but this tool made it easy with everything consolidated.  I was also able to use the interface to find the issue while I was several miles away at the office.  
        • Turns out one of my 4tb hdds has some bad sectors.  Sadly it is the partition that has all my configurations for docker and all my audiobooks.  
        • Which explains the corrupt audiobook files that I have been seeing. 
        • Ordered an 8tb to replace it.  
      • 8Tb HDD was really easy to set up.  Didn’t have to jump through all the large hard drive hoops that I used to have to.
        • Setup in disks and then use rsync to copy everything over 24 hours to copy 4tb of data.  Power down and power back up to make sure the data is still there and the partition is accessible.
        • Use disks again to change the mount name to what the old drive was(one of them the one for docker) and change the mount point on the old drive
        • Restart the machine and make sure that docker is working then point plex to the new drive location.  
        • Do a full shutdown with no power for a few minutes
          • Yes I’m paranoid
        • It is all working.  I now feel comfortable taking the 4Tb out Although I may wait a few days before doing anything with it.  
      • Installed android x86 on the 7140 which may spend some time as my testing machine
        • I did not want to wipe out my hard drive so I attempted to install it to a USB stick
        • I think my powered usb hub or the cable to it was simply not up to the task
        • So I wiped my drive and ran it there.  
        • It was nice being able to play some of the android games on full screen and install all the apps that I usually use on my phone
        • But the sound did not work on either the speakers or the 3.5mm jack but did work over bluetooth so kinda usable 
        • The only issue I had was recovering when it attempted to sleep since the 7140 does not support that.  The touchpad and wifi would both stop working although I could fix the wifi I could not fix the touchpad without a full restart
      • So I wiped the drive again and attempted to install ubuntu cinnamon.  Invalid partition table every time.
        • Will talk about that in the innards but I did get it fixed
      • Also am attempting to install android x86 in virtualbox on my 7130
        • Need to increase the resources for it but it does seem to be working
      • May have to buy a larger/faster drive for the 7140 
      • Dell Venue 8 Pro woes
        • Spent a couple of days trying to get that set back up
        • Couldn’t install anything with cinnamon
        • Ended up install Mint Mate to replace mint xfce
        • Tried all the old audio fixes and could not get the audio working
        • Surprisingly though the Bluetooth is now working
      • Copyq from the going linux podcast
    • Tony W
      • More progress on digitizing 8mm video
        • Located all of the cables for camcorder
        • VLC did capture both audio and video streams, after selecting video camera as source (vs analog TV as used previously per instruction in a reddit or something)
        • Resulting video files from VLC capture are HUGE.  Uncompressed AVI format
        • Essentially the process is to capture audio/video, then convert the raw uncompressed files to MP4 etc (I will use Handbrake for this)
      • I will be doing some work on my home studio in the basement very soon
        • Drywall and insulation, framing around ducts and pipes, carpet…
        • Need permit from county
        • Planning to host band practice at my house for yet another band project
      • Have been enjoying some of the basic features of Plex I had somehow managed to avoid to this point
        • Bought the android app
        • Casting to chromecasts in the house
        • Added user accts for the kids – gives control over BOTH libraries and ratings restriction

    THE NEWS:

    SECURITY UPDATE:

    Announcements:

    • Our Next Episode will be live Feb 9, 2020. 2PM CST, 8PM UTC

    Wrap-up:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible … 

    • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
    ]]>     full 1:09:00 4150     mintCast 324 – Attack of the Releases https://mintcast.org/mintcast-324-attack-of-the-releases/ Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:35:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4060 Then, in our news, Linux Mint 19.3 is almost here, Canonical has been very busy, New elementaryOS and Firefox, and more
    In security, two Linux vulnerabilities and a takeover of PIA goes weird
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    First up, in our Wanderings, Leo suffers from new computer ills, Tony Hughes works on his cars, Moss fiddles with more distros, it’s reading and repairs for Joe, Tony Watts is rockin’ it, and Josh goes mad and gets an iPhone.

    Then, in our news, Linux Mint 19.3 is almost here, Canonical has been very busy, New elementaryOS and Firefox, and more

    In security, two Linux vulnerabilities and a takeover of PIA goes weird

    BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • Finally saved up and got the 5700XT I’ve been drooling over for months.
        • Works great in Windows
        • Not so much in Linux Mint. There was some really bad mouse stutter that really impacted desktop performance and made most games unplayable. I was on the latest development Mesa, version 20, but Kernel 5.3.
        • Had a Manjaro Gnome install that I knew was on a later kernel (5.4.2), and 5.4 had some Navi improvements that affected my card. Tried it, and the desktop was smooth, however, nothing I tried would let me play games. They would freeze and never recover. It was so bad that I couldn’t even hop to a new TTY.
        • Installed UKUU on Mint and upgraded to 5.4.2. Mint wins again.
      • While I was troubleshooting, and using Windows to play games, I couldn’t get over how much my workflow was tied to Linux. I’m glad to be back on Mint.
      • Got the wife a new AData SU800 512GB SSD and she gets my hand-me-down Radeon 380x. Both will be a nice upgrade for her.
    • Tony H 
      • Recorded Distrohoppers with Moss, and this went well.
      • Continuing to play with my diecast models and a few more were delivered this week, some of which were in quite good condition for their age so will be added to the display collection until something better comes along. I restored a Matchbox No. 5c Routemaster London Bus this week and just need to add the advertising decals, which I don’t currently have. I am planning to make my own but need both the decal paper and a colour inkjet or laser printer but as a set of decals for one model can be between £2-3 in the long run it will be cheaper to make my own and I could probably make some for sale as well.
      • I also got a portable spray booth and Airbrush with a mini compressor as Birthday gifts this week, I’ve set up the spray booth in my office/workshop in the spare bedroom and plan to test it out next week before heading up to Scotland until Xmas eve to visit my step son and brother in law.
      • Having new UPVC windows fitted to my garage in preparation for turning it into the Makerspace Workshop. When we lost our last venue we lost the ability to use the Laser cutter and 3D printer as we can not install these at our current meeting venue of one of our local libraries.
      • Joined the BDLL Euro show last night.     
    • Moss 
      • We had a great Episode 008 for Distrohoppers’ Digest, available now at your favorite podcatcher or from our website, http://distrohoppersdigest.blogspot.com. This will be our last one for the year, and our next episode will be more laid back, although I’ve already installed KDE neon on my test machine.
      • I attempted to install Haiku OS on my Kudu, but learned it does not install to UEFI, so I broke out the still-unposted IdeaPad 110. I got to a certain point, and ran into informational vacuum, needing to know how to prepare the partition. I did get a nice response from the team, but have not been able to get back to it.  I learned a lot just getting that far, and maybe I’ll go on from there soon.
      • I attempted to install  Peppermint OS 10 to my test laptop. The partitioning failed. The installer crashed the second try. I reinstalled KDE neon.
      • Sabayon was refusing to load the desktop lately. I could not log in as my username, but logging in as root got me a full-screen terminal. I posted the issue to the Sabayon forum and got a quick reply. Stating that I needed to reload lightdm, with instructions as to how. That worked. As I doubt any of our listeners are running Sabayon, I won’t post the commands I used to fix the issue.
      • I did some Timeshift backups today. I keep infrequent backups of everything except Sabayon (haven’t figured out how to load Timeshift through Entropy). As part of my efforts today, I learned that my Galago Pro identifies the external backup drive as sdb, and then finds I don’t have an sdb5, which is where my Linux Mint is installed (Pearl on sdb3). So I need to keep it unplugged until after boot, or I can’t boot to either Mint or Pearl. Odd that it isn’t identified as sdcX…
      • I had a pretty good birthday, with a pleasant gift from my mother and a lot of good wishes, plus extra hours being offered at work. I have stopped looking for work, with only one possible job not yet offered. Also, a great Thanksgiving and even a Holiday Party, with my friends at the Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Education Center in Liberty Hill, TN. My wife and I feel we have found a new family.
      • And I received a donation from one of our listeners, David Lindberg. Thank you, David!  I purchased some much-needed USB-C cables.
    • Joe
      • Finished relistening to the Dresden files.  Love that series. Can’t recommend enough to everyone
        • Very well read
        • Good long series that takes some time to get through even at 4x
        • Too long since the last one but the author has had to work through a lot of issues and from what I understand the wait should not be long now.
      • Also went through the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony
        • This is a very convoluted series where all the books are very intertwined
        • Well read and well written
      • Need to catch up on Rick and Morty new season.
      • Behind on all the tv shows.
      • Bought some LG HBS 510’s 
        • Kinda old school
        • ordered 4 for 15 dollars
        • 1 no power show fully charged
        • Battery is working fine.  Can’t find a problem with the switch.  could check all the wires across for continuity.  But won’t. need the extra parts anyway
        • One of the sides went on another set
        • 1 neither side works but connects and pause play works
          • This will probably just require shortening of the cables
        • 1 left side out 
          • obvious, the casing was cracked around the earpiece and I could see that one of the connections was off.  soldered back on and glued the casing together with jb weld. It works great may go back and fill the hole with JB Weld 
        • 1 right side out, as in it is not there.  Another cracked casing but the speaker fell off
          • Was able to take one side from the one that wont turn on and swap it in.  now it just plain works
        • Should be able to fix 3.   
        • had extra glue so also glued one of the 820s with a broken band.
          • But it did not hold very well even after a couple of days worth of drying
        • The 510s are smaller and have fewer buttons than most of the ones that I have worked with but are still usable.  the sound is not terrible and they are not too difficult to work on. a single large mic that will require more testing.  Battery life is middling. the materials are a bit flimsy considering some of the fixes that I had to put in but they are also the lightest neckband headset I have used.  No one has complained about the call quality and I have not had any issue on my side of a call. the simplistic controls do take a bit of getting used to, especially when I am still switching amongst other headsets with a more standard setup.
      • Ordered another Dell Venue 7130 for 40 dollars.  Don’t know much about it yet other than it is missing the M.2 hard drive.  But it is the i5 version so it is either 4 or 8gb version.  
        • I have extra drives for it
        • Will find out if it has a good battery
        • And a good charging port
        • But there are 2 charging ports so if the usb one is bad I may have to either buy a dock or one of the high powered ones that use the same port
        • If I get it working I will either turn around and sell it or give it to one of my kids.
      • Fixed my dad’s old Toshiba Satellite L755-S5110
        • It had this problem where during startup it would get past the splash screen and start beeping horrendously
        • Figured it was the ram so I pulled the ram sticks one at a time and tested with less ram and known good ram still the same issue
        • So I removed the keyboard and started it up.  Worked fine.
        • Tested rehooking the keyboard while it was booted and it is always triggering some keys.
        • May order a new keyboard or may just use it as a settop box.
        • Second gen core i3 but still usable.  
        • Does need a new battery
        • But other than that, it would cost 20 dollars, 13 for the keyboard and 7 for the power supply to have a working laptop
        • Like 12 dollars for a battery.
      • Also was having a problem with my garage computer randomly shutting off.
        • Hard to isolate the problem because days could go by without it happening
        • After much testing of peripherals to find the issue I discovered that it was a problem with my Thinkpad USB 3.0 docking station
        • So I am looking for a decent low cost powered replacement (probably a couple of them) 
        • Preferably 7 ports and sub 10 dollars but I am not finding anything that fits the bill. 
      • Bought a Samsung gear fit2
        • Not sure how much I like it.
        • Heart rate is iffy 
        • Step count I will have to track more
    • Tony W
      • Busy as ever with music.  
        • Formed a band of my colleagues at the office and we played at the company holiday party.  It was a resounding success.  
        • Speaking of holiday party… will be doing to my wife’s work party toward end of our show, may have to drop a bit early
        • Also solo gigs, rock band, church band…
      • Mobile recording setup:
        • Dell 7130
        • Presonus Audiobox USB
          • Metal – built like a tank
          • Works out of the box with Linux, no problems whatsoever
          • Very light and portable
          • Power draws from USB – no power plug required
        • Unidirectional microphone (Either my Behringer or a borrowed Shure SM58 – doesn’t seem to be a dramatic difference)
          • I use a unidirectional mic to avoid picking up noise in my house (space heater and server right next to me, not to mention anything else in the rest of the house, kids, dogs…)
      • Dell 7130
        • Spent more time with the machine after it being a bit idle for a while.  I tend to spend a lot of time *obsessively* getting things to work like I want, and then walk away from them after that is accomplished.
        • Batteries in both tablet and keyboard actually seem to be in pretty good shape.  Linux mint indicates keyboard will last nearly 3 hours and the tablet about 7.5 hrs (have not tested this, no idea if will actually get that much, but so far can confirm the keyboard will last 2+ hrs charging the tablet)
        • Keyboard is very glitchy.  Have to dock multiple times before the tablet will recognize keyboard/touchpad (even though battery display seems to update every time)
        • Ordered a tablet keyboard cover, maybe less issues.  Will report back on that
      • New work laptop
        • Old: Dell E6430
          • I used that laptop for 7+ years.  IT dept delayed in replacing it as it was up to spec after various upgrades
          • Processor 3rd gen i7, 8GB Ram, 500GB SSD, new battery…
          • Replaced due to touchpad button issues (may have been a Windows only problem)
        • New: Thinkpad T480.  Great machine
          • I7 model
          • I will need a USB C dock now, for working at home
    • Josh
      • Finished my mock exams (finally) after two weeks. Sorry for the absence but they say school comes first (whatever that means).
      • Released Issue 6 of micro:mag, our most popular issue yet where we got 2000 readers in the first 48 hours.
      • Got myself some 8BitDo Bluetooth Stereo Speakers after winning a gift card during a Black Friday competition. Really good for the price and work well with Linux.
      • Last time I was on the show, I was having some trouble with Google after my Pixel 3 got RMAed.
        • 3 Months of battling with them
        • Support engineers cut me off the phone a few times
        • They can’t contact the refunds team
        • Google support is the worst
        • I really don’t want to be negative, but this has happened to many other customers too
        • We contacted the retailer where I got the phone from, John Lewis, who refunded me after trying Google support from themselves and seeing how bad it was.
      • I ended up getting the iPhone 11 Pro on a really good contract with o2 here in the UK after putting some of the refund money towards it.
        • iOS is really nice
        • Camera is incredible, especially the 4k60 video
        • Smooth performance
        • 2 Day Battery life
        • Apple devices are still too expensive and i’d never buy one outright but luckily thanks to a mix of Black Friday deals and putting a bit of money upfront from what I did have. 

    THE NEWS: 

    • Linux Mint 19.3 Images Being Tested
      • Images showed up on Friday, marked as testing. Release is imminent!
    • Canonical announces Ubuntu Pro for AWS
      • These images, for a little extra money, provide 10 years of support, Kernel Livepatching, Compliance profiles for things like HIPAA and PCI, and AWS Security integration.
    • Ubuntu AWS Will Use A Rolling Kernel
      • For non Ubuntu Pro instances, you’ll still be getting some goodies.
      • The rolling kernel is the typical hardware enablement kernel with AWS features built in, and all 18.04 instances will be upgraded to 5.0 from 4.15 by default.
      • You can test early to be sure things will work
        • sudo apt install linux-aws-edge
      • Or you can force your instances to stay on 4.15.
        • sudo apt install linux-aws-lts-18.04
    • Canonical Becomes Feature Sponsor for WSLConf
      • Hayden Barnes, Developer Advocate, Ubuntu on WSL, Canonical
    • Nginx offices raided for copyright dispute with Rambler (Moss)
    • Open Source Music Notations Software Musescore 3.3 Released! (Tony W)
      • For playing, printing and creating sheet music
      • Free but can use either a free or premium account for sharing with Musescore community
    • elementary OS 5.1 Hera
      • A new Greeter and first-install process
      • Flatpak Support
      • Accessibility being treated as normal options rather than things shoved away into a corner.
      • Ubuntu’s HWE 5.0 Kernel.
      • Some app improvements
      • If you’re upgrading from Juno, you won’t get the new kernel automatically. For that, run:
        • sudo apt install –install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-18.04
    • Firefox 71
      • Picture in Picture for videos! (Windows only for now. Linux and Mac in Firefox 72)
      • Native MP3 decoding on Windows, Linux, and macOS
      • More visible tracking protection
      • Improvements to Lockwise
      • Kiosk mode
    • Zorin OS 15.1 released (Moss)
    • Ubuntu Cinnamon first release (not official flavor yet)
    • MS Teams Is Now On Linux (second link)
    • Mac Pro is here (Josh)
      • Probably one of the most powerful consumer computers out there
      • Comes with a price for the top spec – $52,748.00
        • 2.5GHz 28‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
        • 1.5TB (12x128GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
        • Two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo with 2x32GB of HBM2 memory each
        • 4TB SSD storage
        • Apple Afterburner card
        • Stainless steel frame with wheels
        • Magic Mouse 2 + Magic Trackpad 2
        • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English
      • Base spec is $6,000 which is very expensive for what you get
        • 3.5GHz 8‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
        • 32GB (4x8GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
        • Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
        • 256GB SSD storage
        • Stainless steel frame with feet
        • Magic Mouse 2
        • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English

    SECURITY UPDATE: 

    • <Moss>Remember the PIA purchase by Kape Technologies? Kape is a renamed malware company owned by a former Israeli spy (not from right wing sources)
    • New Linux Vulnerability Lets Attackers Hijack VPN Connections
      • Very in depth, but the short and sweet of it is that using this vulnerability allows an attacker to inject packets regardless of encryption.
      • People with a version of systemd released after Nov 28th, 2019 are affected. However, more distributions that aren’t on systemd are affected: Devuan, Void, FreeBSD.
      • A temporary fix would be to block bogon IP addresses. Essentially bogus or fake IPs. See: https://ipinfo.io/bogon 
    • Two malicious Python scripts caught stealing SSH and GPG keys
      • A result of typosquatting. Essentially naming libraries visually similar to confuse people into using the library.
      • Python3-dateutil was spoofing dateutil
      • JeIlyfish (the first l is replaced with a capital I) was spoofing Jellyfish. The spoofed JeIlyfish libraries were where the malicious code resided, and python3-dateutil would call the malicious JeIlyfish library.

    Once the libraries are used, keys are sent to xxx://68.183.212.246:32258

    ANNOUNCEMENTS:

    • Next Episode will be December 29, 2019, 2pm Central US time.

    WRAP-UP:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

    • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
    ]]>     full 4060     mintCast 324 – Attack of the Releases (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-324-attack-of-the-releases-mp3/ Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:35:14 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4055 Then, in our news, Linux Mint 19.3 is almost here, Canonical has been very busy, New elementaryOS and Firefox, and more
    In security, two Linux vulnerabilities and a takeover of PIA goes weird
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    First up, in our Wanderings, Leo suffers from new computer ills, Tony Hughes works on his cars, Moss fiddles with more distros, it’s reading and repairs for Joe, Tony Watts is rockin’ it, and Josh goes mad and gets an iPhone.

    Then, in our news, Linux Mint 19.3 is almost here, Canonical has been very busy, New elementaryOS and Firefox, and more

    In security, two Linux vulnerabilities and a takeover of PIA goes weird

    BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • Finally saved up and got the 5700XT I’ve been drooling over for months.
        • Works great in Windows
        • Not so much in Linux Mint. There was some really bad mouse stutter that really impacted desktop performance and made most games unplayable. I was on the latest development Mesa, version 20, but Kernel 5.3.
        • Had a Manjaro Gnome install that I knew was on a later kernel (5.4.2), and 5.4 had some Navi improvements that affected my card. Tried it, and the desktop was smooth, however, nothing I tried would let me play games. They would freeze and never recover. It was so bad that I couldn’t even hop to a new TTY.
        • Installed UKUU on Mint and upgraded to 5.4.2. Mint wins again.
      • While I was troubleshooting, and using Windows to play games, I couldn’t get over how much my workflow was tied to Linux. I’m glad to be back on Mint.
      • Got the wife a new AData SU800 512GB SSD and she gets my hand-me-down Radeon 380x. Both will be a nice upgrade for her.
    • Tony H 
      • Recorded Distrohoppers with Moss, and this went well.
      • Continuing to play with my diecast models and a few more were delivered this week, some of which were in quite good condition for their age so will be added to the display collection until something better comes along. I restored a Matchbox No. 5c Routemaster London Bus this week and just need to add the advertising decals, which I don’t currently have. I am planning to make my own but need both the decal paper and a colour inkjet or laser printer but as a set of decals for one model can be between £2-3 in the long run it will be cheaper to make my own and I could probably make some for sale as well.
      • I also got a portable spray booth and Airbrush with a mini compressor as Birthday gifts this week, I’ve set up the spray booth in my office/workshop in the spare bedroom and plan to test it out next week before heading up to Scotland until Xmas eve to visit my step son and brother in law.
      • Having new UPVC windows fitted to my garage in preparation for turning it into the Makerspace Workshop. When we lost our last venue we lost the ability to use the Laser cutter and 3D printer as we can not install these at our current meeting venue of one of our local libraries.
      • Joined the BDLL Euro show last night.     
    • Moss 
      • We had a great Episode 008 for Distrohoppers’ Digest, available now at your favorite podcatcher or from our website, http://distrohoppersdigest.blogspot.com. This will be our last one for the year, and our next episode will be more laid back, although I’ve already installed KDE neon on my test machine.
      • I attempted to install Haiku OS on my Kudu, but learned it does not install to UEFI, so I broke out the still-unposted IdeaPad 110. I got to a certain point, and ran into informational vacuum, needing to know how to prepare the partition. I did get a nice response from the team, but have not been able to get back to it.  I learned a lot just getting that far, and maybe I’ll go on from there soon.
      • I attempted to install  Peppermint OS 10 to my test laptop. The partitioning failed. The installer crashed the second try. I reinstalled KDE neon.
      • Sabayon was refusing to load the desktop lately. I could not log in as my username, but logging in as root got me a full-screen terminal. I posted the issue to the Sabayon forum and got a quick reply. Stating that I needed to reload lightdm, with instructions as to how. That worked. As I doubt any of our listeners are running Sabayon, I won’t post the commands I used to fix the issue.
      • I did some Timeshift backups today. I keep infrequent backups of everything except Sabayon (haven’t figured out how to load Timeshift through Entropy). As part of my efforts today, I learned that my Galago Pro identifies the external backup drive as sdb, and then finds I don’t have an sdb5, which is where my Linux Mint is installed (Pearl on sdb3). So I need to keep it unplugged until after boot, or I can’t boot to either Mint or Pearl. Odd that it isn’t identified as sdcX…
      • I had a pretty good birthday, with a pleasant gift from my mother and a lot of good wishes, plus extra hours being offered at work. I have stopped looking for work, with only one possible job not yet offered. Also, a great Thanksgiving and even a Holiday Party, with my friends at the Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Education Center in Liberty Hill, TN. My wife and I feel we have found a new family.
      • And I received a donation from one of our listeners, David Lindberg. Thank you, David!  I purchased some much-needed USB-C cables.
    • Joe
      • Finished relistening to the Dresden files.  Love that series. Can’t recommend enough to everyone
        • Very well read
        • Good long series that takes some time to get through even at 4x
        • Too long since the last one but the author has had to work through a lot of issues and from what I understand the wait should not be long now.
      • Also went through the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony
        • This is a very convoluted series where all the books are very intertwined
        • Well read and well written
      • Need to catch up on Rick and Morty new season.
      • Behind on all the tv shows.
      • Bought some LG HBS 510’s 
        • Kinda old school
        • ordered 4 for 15 dollars
        • 1 no power show fully charged
        • Battery is working fine.  Can’t find a problem with the switch.  could check all the wires across for continuity.  But won’t. need the extra parts anyway
        • One of the sides went on another set
        • 1 neither side works but connects and pause play works
          • This will probably just require shortening of the cables
        • 1 left side out 
          • obvious, the casing was cracked around the earpiece and I could see that one of the connections was off.  soldered back on and glued the casing together with jb weld. It works great may go back and fill the hole with JB Weld 
        • 1 right side out, as in it is not there.  Another cracked casing but the speaker fell off
          • Was able to take one side from the one that wont turn on and swap it in.  now it just plain works
        • Should be able to fix 3.   
        • had extra glue so also glued one of the 820s with a broken band.
          • But it did not hold very well even after a couple of days worth of drying
        • The 510s are smaller and have fewer buttons than most of the ones that I have worked with but are still usable.  the sound is not terrible and they are not too difficult to work on. a single large mic that will require more testing.  Battery life is middling. the materials are a bit flimsy considering some of the fixes that I had to put in but they are also the lightest neckband headset I have used.  No one has complained about the call quality and I have not had any issue on my side of a call. the simplistic controls do take a bit of getting used to, especially when I am still switching amongst other headsets with a more standard setup.
      • Ordered another Dell Venue 7130 for 40 dollars.  Don’t know much about it yet other than it is missing the M.2 hard drive.  But it is the i5 version so it is either 4 or 8gb version.  
        • I have extra drives for it
        • Will find out if it has a good battery
        • And a good charging port
        • But there are 2 charging ports so if the usb one is bad I may have to either buy a dock or one of the high powered ones that use the same port
        • If I get it working I will either turn around and sell it or give it to one of my kids.
      • Fixed my dad’s old Toshiba Satellite L755-S5110
        • It had this problem where during startup it would get past the splash screen and start beeping horrendously
        • Figured it was the ram so I pulled the ram sticks one at a time and tested with less ram and known good ram still the same issue
        • So I removed the keyboard and started it up.  Worked fine.
        • Tested rehooking the keyboard while it was booted and it is always triggering some keys.
        • May order a new keyboard or may just use it as a settop box.
        • Second gen core i3 but still usable.  
        • Does need a new battery
        • But other than that, it would cost 20 dollars, 13 for the keyboard and 7 for the power supply to have a working laptop
        • Like 12 dollars for a battery.
      • Also was having a problem with my garage computer randomly shutting off.
        • Hard to isolate the problem because days could go by without it happening
        • After much testing of peripherals to find the issue I discovered that it was a problem with my Thinkpad USB 3.0 docking station
        • So I am looking for a decent low cost powered replacement (probably a couple of them) 
        • Preferably 7 ports and sub 10 dollars but I am not finding anything that fits the bill. 
      • Bought a Samsung gear fit2
        • Not sure how much I like it.
        • Heart rate is iffy 
        • Step count I will have to track more
    • Tony W
      • Busy as ever with music.  
        • Formed a band of my colleagues at the office and we played at the company holiday party.  It was a resounding success.  
        • Speaking of holiday party… will be doing to my wife’s work party toward end of our show, may have to drop a bit early
        • Also solo gigs, rock band, church band…
      • Mobile recording setup:
        • Dell 7130
        • Presonus Audiobox USB
          • Metal – built like a tank
          • Works out of the box with Linux, no problems whatsoever
          • Very light and portable
          • Power draws from USB – no power plug required
        • Unidirectional microphone (Either my Behringer or a borrowed Shure SM58 – doesn’t seem to be a dramatic difference)
          • I use a unidirectional mic to avoid picking up noise in my house (space heater and server right next to me, not to mention anything else in the rest of the house, kids, dogs…)
      • Dell 7130
        • Spent more time with the machine after it being a bit idle for a while.  I tend to spend a lot of time *obsessively* getting things to work like I want, and then walk away from them after that is accomplished.
        • Batteries in both tablet and keyboard actually seem to be in pretty good shape.  Linux mint indicates keyboard will last nearly 3 hours and the tablet about 7.5 hrs (have not tested this, no idea if will actually get that much, but so far can confirm the keyboard will last 2+ hrs charging the tablet)
        • Keyboard is very glitchy.  Have to dock multiple times before the tablet will recognize keyboard/touchpad (even though battery display seems to update every time)
        • Ordered a tablet keyboard cover, maybe less issues.  Will report back on that
      • New work laptop
        • Old: Dell E6430
          • I used that laptop for 7+ years.  IT dept delayed in replacing it as it was up to spec after various upgrades
          • Processor 3rd gen i7, 8GB Ram, 500GB SSD, new battery…
          • Replaced due to touchpad button issues (may have been a Windows only problem)
        • New: Thinkpad T480.  Great machine
          • I7 model
          • I will need a USB C dock now, for working at home
    • Josh
      • Finished my mock exams (finally) after two weeks. Sorry for the absence but they say school comes first (whatever that means).
      • Released Issue 6 of micro:mag, our most popular issue yet where we got 2000 readers in the first 48 hours.
      • Got myself some 8BitDo Bluetooth Stereo Speakers after winning a gift card during a Black Friday competition. Really good for the price and work well with Linux.
      • Last time I was on the show, I was having some trouble with Google after my Pixel 3 got RMAed.
        • 3 Months of battling with them
        • Support engineers cut me off the phone a few times
        • They can’t contact the refunds team
        • Google support is the worst
        • I really don’t want to be negative, but this has happened to many other customers too
        • We contacted the retailer where I got the phone from, John Lewis, who refunded me after trying Google support from themselves and seeing how bad it was.
      • I ended up getting the iPhone 11 Pro on a really good contract with o2 here in the UK after putting some of the refund money towards it.
        • iOS is really nice
        • Camera is incredible, especially the 4k60 video
        • Smooth performance
        • 2 Day Battery life
        • Apple devices are still too expensive and i’d never buy one outright but luckily thanks to a mix of Black Friday deals and putting a bit of money upfront from what I did have. 

    THE NEWS: 

    • Linux Mint 19.3 Images Being Tested
      • Images showed up on Friday, marked as testing. Release is imminent!
    • Canonical announces Ubuntu Pro for AWS
      • These images, for a little extra money, provide 10 years of support, Kernel Livepatching, Compliance profiles for things like HIPAA and PCI, and AWS Security integration.
    • Ubuntu AWS Will Use A Rolling Kernel
      • For non Ubuntu Pro instances, you’ll still be getting some goodies.
      • The rolling kernel is the typical hardware enablement kernel with AWS features built in, and all 18.04 instances will be upgraded to 5.0 from 4.15 by default.
      • You can test early to be sure things will work
        • sudo apt install linux-aws-edge
      • Or you can force your instances to stay on 4.15.
        • sudo apt install linux-aws-lts-18.04
    • Canonical Becomes Feature Sponsor for WSLConf
      • Hayden Barnes, Developer Advocate, Ubuntu on WSL, Canonical
    • Nginx offices raided for copyright dispute with Rambler (Moss)
    • Open Source Music Notations Software Musescore 3.3 Released! (Tony W)
      • For playing, printing and creating sheet music
      • Free but can use either a free or premium account for sharing with Musescore community
    • elementary OS 5.1 Hera
      • A new Greeter and first-install process
      • Flatpak Support
      • Accessibility being treated as normal options rather than things shoved away into a corner.
      • Ubuntu’s HWE 5.0 Kernel.
      • Some app improvements
      • If you’re upgrading from Juno, you won’t get the new kernel automatically. For that, run:
        • sudo apt install –install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-18.04
    • Firefox 71
      • Picture in Picture for videos! (Windows only for now. Linux and Mac in Firefox 72)
      • Native MP3 decoding on Windows, Linux, and macOS
      • More visible tracking protection
      • Improvements to Lockwise
      • Kiosk mode
    • Zorin OS 15.1 released (Moss)
    • Ubuntu Cinnamon first release (not official flavor yet)
    • MS Teams Is Now On Linux (second link)
    • Mac Pro is here (Josh)
      • Probably one of the most powerful consumer computers out there
      • Comes with a price for the top spec – $52,748.00
        • 2.5GHz 28‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
        • 1.5TB (12x128GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
        • Two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo with 2x32GB of HBM2 memory each
        • 4TB SSD storage
        • Apple Afterburner card
        • Stainless steel frame with wheels
        • Magic Mouse 2 + Magic Trackpad 2
        • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English
      • Base spec is $6,000 which is very expensive for what you get
        • 3.5GHz 8‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
        • 32GB (4x8GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
        • Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
        • 256GB SSD storage
        • Stainless steel frame with feet
        • Magic Mouse 2
        • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English

    SECURITY UPDATE: 

    • <Moss>Remember the PIA purchase by Kape Technologies? Kape is a renamed malware company owned by a former Israeli spy (not from right wing sources)
    • New Linux Vulnerability Lets Attackers Hijack VPN Connections
      • Very in depth, but the short and sweet of it is that using this vulnerability allows an attacker to inject packets regardless of encryption.
      • People with a version of systemd released after Nov 28th, 2019 are affected. However, more distributions that aren’t on systemd are affected: Devuan, Void, FreeBSD.
      • A temporary fix would be to block bogon IP addresses. Essentially bogus or fake IPs. See: https://ipinfo.io/bogon 
    • Two malicious Python scripts caught stealing SSH and GPG keys
      • A result of typosquatting. Essentially naming libraries visually similar to confuse people into using the library.
      • Python3-dateutil was spoofing dateutil
      • JeIlyfish (the first l is replaced with a capital I) was spoofing Jellyfish. The spoofed JeIlyfish libraries were where the malicious code resided, and python3-dateutil would call the malicious JeIlyfish library.

    Once the libraries are used, keys are sent to xxx://68.183.212.246:32258

    ANNOUNCEMENTS:

    • Next Episode will be December 29, 2019, 2pm Central US time.

    WRAP-UP:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

    • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
    ]]>     full 4055     mintCast 323 – Ok, Beta https://mintcast.org/mintcast-323-ok-beta/ Wed, 04 Dec 2019 06:42:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4038 Then, in our news, Linux Mint has a new update, System76 builds its own laptops, Kali goes undercover, the new 5.4 Kernel, and more!
    In security, we talk D-Link remote access.
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    In our Innards section, we talk more about Linux Mint and Clem’s comments.
    And finally, our listener feedback.

    BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • Working on the stream
        • With Josh schedule packed, I gave streaming a try. Back to youtube it is since the barrier to entry was so low.
        • OBS is quite the software. Currently, we’re doing a streaming simple with an image. Nothing fancy, but as I got looking into the details, you can do so much more.
        • I didn’t want to rock the boat too much, but a Telegram, Discord and IRC chat monitor would be nifty, and something I want to look into for the future if we stick with youtube.
        • I know there are people out there that want an audio-only stream. For you all, I have a fix.
      • UBPorts on a Nexus 7 2013 (Wifi)
        • This was an interesting journey. I dusted off my Nexus 7 from a few years ago, plugged it in to charge, and about 30 minutes later, was installing UBPorts using their snap installer.
        • The bootloader was unlocked years ago, so I can’t recall exactly how I did my ADB magic, but I’ve had a few OSes on it over the years.
        • I’m just getting familiar with Ubuntu Touch, but it seems promising.
      • Installed a 1080p panel on my T450s
        • Fun times. For a little under $50, I bought a 1080p replacement panel for my T450s. I had been on the 900p panel since I bought it about two years ago, and finally got fed up with it. The discoloration that comes with TN panels finally wore me down.
        • This 1080p was supposed to be an IPS Field Replacement Unit, so, same same as the OEM screen, but turned out to be a 1080p TN, or low quality VA panel, at best.
        • Still 1080p, still more room, still a huge improvement, and for the price, I’m still happy.
    • Tony H 
      • This week I’ve put Mint onto an HP G62 Laptop with a 2.1 GHz AMD Phenom II Triple-Core Processor N830. This processor came out in December 2010 so the PC is nearly 9 years old. I used it at the LUG last week and the battery life despite being at full capacity (I suspect it is a replacement of the original) is a paltory 1.5-2 Hrs or less if playing video, and it runs quite walm. The top power on the CPU is 35w, compared to modern mobile processors which can be less than half of this processor. It’s probably destined to be passed onto my local homeless charity to give someone a new start in tech.
      • Continuing to get to grips with Ubuntu 19.10, thanks to Peter Jones I now have a half usable system with the Dash to Panel installed and on the bottom of the screen and the side dock hidden from view. Feels a little more like home, but it would be great if this was a one button in a menu somewhere to set it up without having to install all these additional functions to get it to work. Apart from this, it’s a great Linux OS as you would expect from Ubuntu, I can’t say I’ve had any issues with it at all in day to day use. 
      • Also continuing to Invest (code for spending all my money) on my new hobby of restoring Matchbox models. I bought a large consignment on Ebay and got a bargain with many 50’s and 60’s models and only a few of the later 1970’s (which are still nearly 50 years old). I’ve been buying tools and preparing to buy a small modelers spray booth, as well as buying materials for paint stripping and preparing the models for repainting. Starting to appreciate the time these YouTubers put in to the hobby and all the videoing and post production it takes. 
      • As of yesterday I actually completed my first restoration a Matchbox No28 Mk10 Jaguar if any one is interested.     

     

    • Moss 
      • I sold an ASUS MeMOPad to a listener; I hadn’t even put it up for sale, but he asked what I had that was cheap and I told him. It was a turkey of a tablet; I had such high hopes for it when I bought it. I got about $12 for it and bought some groceries.
      • Zorin OS 15 has just released their Lite version, with XFCE Desktop, and they did quite a lovely job on the desktop. I put it on my Kudu 3, and I kinda like it. Yes, I am now triple-booting the Kudu – Core, Ultimate, and Lite – but it’s all Zorin.
      • During a period of digital frustration, I remembered I had a free partition on my Galago Pro 2. I eased my nerves by taking a few hours and successfully installing Sabayon. Yes, it took a while. Yes, it’s Gentoo. But it’s so sweet…
      • I made an attempt to boot my inherited Linux box. Sadly, the password was not what I expected, so I couldn’t log into what was probably an old version of Fedora, so I attempted to install Linux Mint on it. I ran into another instance of the GRUB not being written properly, and I also could not get the CD drive to boot (I could have used my Super Grub 2 disk). I had some discussion with the Telegram group of people, mostly cryptodan and Peter Jones, and got frustrated so I put the box away for a while. I promise to get back to it. The box is pretty nice, a mini ATX with 16 Gb of RAM and a 120 Gb SSD on a Gigabyte motherboard.
      • I have added some tiers and a Donation link to my Sponsus page. Now to get some sponsors and donations. 
      • I found I had opened 2 accounts at ReverbNation sometime in 2014 and promptly forgotten about both; I’ve written RN to see if they can combine the two and then see if I can put the site to some use promoting my music. I did find a recording I didn’t think I had posted anywhere on one of the accounts.
      • I just celebrated my 3rd Anniversary…and Wednesday will be my mmphthy-mmph birthday. Distrohoppers’ Digest is set to be recorded on Wednesday, and Tony should have it out by Friday.

     

    • Joe
      • Listened to an Audio Drama/podcast.  2 Seasons of Wolverine.  
      • Also listened to Piers Anthony’s Bio Of a Space Tyrant
        • Most assuredly not a book for younger readers.  Based on the topics
          • Murder 
          • Piracy
          • Incest
          • Sex with people that I would consider underage
        • I did listen to all 6 books in the series and Anthony is one of my more liked authors.
        • He also writes all his books on linux machines since about 2000
        • Well read series
        • But in the end I am not sure I would recommend to readers.
        • I didn’t dislike it but I find it hard to suggest it for others
      •  Listening to the Dresden Files again, hoping that the next one comes out soon
      •  Replaced the keyboard on that convertible laptop
        • Also removed Linux and reinstalled Windows for my daughter
        • Had to install woeusb in order to get a functioning bootable Windows 10 usb stick
        • Then gave it to my eldest daughter and she gave her laptop to her sister
        • Who ruined another charging port on another tablet, the ASUS Transformer T102HA which I will be taking apart to see if it is an easy fix because it is an awesome device
        • That is 2 T100’s and a T102 that currently have that problem.  Looks like I need to learn how to fix it and get a hot air gun.
      • Also had a problem with one of my Dell Venue 11 keyboards where not all the keys were working
        • I had a spare keyboard with a bad battery so I did a swap between the two but for some reason the touchpad would not work(at least not with the battery connected)
        • So I pulled the touchpad off and swapped that from the one with bad keys
        • Still didn’t work
        • So I swapped the cables for the touchpad.
        • Still didn’t work
        • So I swapped the connector bracket that goes from the keyboard to the tablet, thinking it would be the last time I had to take it apart
        • It wasn’t, still didn’t work
        • Finally I swapped the mainboard hoping that wasn’t what was bad on the other keyboard and it works great(most of the time)
        • Still some issues sometimes on restart but that seems to be a problem with all keyboards for this device.  Just disconnect a reconnect a couple of times and everything works
        • About 7 hours worth of work total with testing and reseating between each step to make sure I had done things correctly.  Also I could have had it done much quicker if I had realized it was the mainboard first.
        • But hey I have 2 fully functioning keyboards again and I know a lot more about how that keyboard is put together.
        • Really need the extra battery power to make it through the day.
        • But I am still thinking about getting one of the soft keyboards without batteries.
      • Picked up a travel router
        • GL.iNet GL-AR300M-EXT 
        • Works good so far.  
        • Easytether install worked like a charm.  But t-mo seems to be detecting and throttling.  May be detecting the router. More testing required. More details in the innards.
    • Tony W
      • RAM upgrade on main/living room PC (why did I not do this before?)
      • Gaming fun: Native Linux and Proton games on Steam, PCSX2 Emulator
        • Native on Linux 
          • Team Fortress 2 (my kid plays this, I watched)
          • CS GO, No Room in Hell are MPO games I still plan to try
          • Was interested in Shadow of Mordr and Tomb Raider but too expensive
        • PCSX2 Emulator
          • Fun, works well
          • Had to change a couple of the defaults for Spiderman 2 
            • Changed graphics to Software vs hardware
        • Reversed axes for controllerProton: 
          • Underpowered machine: PC is an old Lenovo with i3 4th Gen, low profile 1GB Nvidia card, 8GB of Ram
          • Batman Arkham Origins – Unplayable due to lag in Steam/Proton.  I am sure it would have been fine on a more powerful PC. It did run OK in Windows
          • GTA San Andreas – Ran great in Proton, occasional crashing when loading a saved game.  Easy enough to kill with TOP and restart. Not a bi issue for me but I see how minor glitches like this might be annoying enough to make somebody dive back to Windows to play a game
          • Consensus on Proton, definitely awesome if you have a machine that can spare the overhead

    THE NEWS:

    • Linux Mint Monthly News ALL
      • “All 3 editions of Linux Mint 19.3 passed QA and we’ll be announcing the BETA release on Tuesday!”
      • Assuming that’s December 3rd.
      • New, unannounced changes to the software section, and three new apps are making their arrival.
      • System Reports will now give messages from the tray. This will give users access to workarounds, solutions  and information. This feature will also be used to announce the full release of 19.3 from within the BETA, and it’s being backported, so you’ll hear about it on 19.2 and previous as well (if you run updates on older releases)!
    • System76 will start designing and building their computers from the ground up in DenverMOSS
    • Kali Linux 2019.4 Released LEO
      • XFCE the new default desktop
      • kali-undercover changes your DE to look like Windows. Icons and all.
      • Our markdown overlords are winning. Kali’s docs are now in markdown!
      • BTRFS 
    • Kape Technologies buys PIA’s parent company (also owns ZenMate and CyberGhost VPNs – total over 2 million paying subscribers)MOSS
    • Kernel 5.4 is released Tony W LTS – last LTS was 4.19
      • Primary feature is a new kernel lockdown mode that aims to improve the separation of UID 0 (aka root) and the kernel.
      • Lots of AMD support added – 
        • Navi 12 and 14 GPUs
        • MD Arcturus graphics cards,
        • AMD Dali APU
        • AMD 2020 APU
      • Lots of added ARM support Snapdragon 855, a bunch of ARM based laptops (ASUS NovaGo, HP Envy X2 and the Lenovo Miix 630)
    • Is full Linux kernel support coming to Android? Google outlines its plans Joe
    • Librem 5 is shipping, First Impressions TONY W
      • Early adopter/developer stage
      • Some flaws that are expected to be fixed in future software updates
        • No audio in calls
        • Camera issues
        • Battery life “meh”
        • Gets really warm
        • Software generally alpha status
      • Former employees have expressed the company releases “disingenuous” updates
      • My opinions:
        • I am glad to hear the progress that some backers have the device in hand, and the early flaws don’t dampen my optimism
        • you REALLY have to believe in the Purism/Librem cause to justify $699 for this device, especially when Pinephone is coming soon at $149!!!  (300 Euros for Volla phone, *Check This Out)
    • Glimpse Released LEO
      • The 0.1.0 release is based on 2.10.12, instead of the current 2.10.14.
      • The Glimpse guys prefer Flatpak as the preferred way to install (it’s on top!)
      • Snap and AUR are in a separate community section.
      • Windows and Mac are also supported (same as GIMP)
    • US Student was building a Gentoo-based distro for ISIS MOSS

    SECURITY UPDATE: 

        • D-Link ‘Won’t Fix’ even more routers
          • The flaw (CVE-2019-16920) that D-Link won’t fix allows an attacker to bypass authentication entirely to get admin access to your router. This is very, very not good. 
          • You can mitigate the issue by turning off remote management, but that doesn’t stop the attack from happening from within your network. Please do yourself a favor and move to something else.
          • Models: DIR-866, DIR-655, DHP-1565, DIR-652, DAP-1533, DGL-5500, DIR-130, DIR-330, DIR-615, DIR-825, DIR-835, DIR-855L and DIR-862.
        • Mozilla Increasing Bug Bounty Payouts
          • Doubling, for critical, core and other Mozilla sites. 
          • And, tripling for Remote Code Execution on critical sites.
          • Firefox Monitor and Private Network are added to the list of Core Sites
        • Webmin Attacked by Mr. Roboto Botnet
          • A follow-up to Episode 316.
          • The vulnerability we were talking in that episode has been weaponized
          • Mr. Roboto, the botnet, is utilizing the flaw to be able to create a reverse shell, run commands, run files within URLs, DDoS, and self-uninstall.

    ANNOUNCEMENTS:

    • Next Show: Dec 15, 2019 – 2PM US Central Time

    WRAP-UP:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

    • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
    ]]>     full 1:15:38 4038     mintCast 323 – Ok, Beta (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-323-ok-beta-mp3/ Wed, 04 Dec 2019 06:35:49 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4036 Then, in our news, Linux Mint has a new update, System76 builds its own laptops, Kali goes undercover, the new 5.4 Kernel, and more!
    In security, we talk D-Link remote access.
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    First up, in our Wanderings, Leo Goes Upstream, Moss fights frustration by installing Sabayon again, Tony Hughes grapples with Gnome3, Joe fixes some keyboards, and Tony Watts plays on Proton

    Then, in our news, Linux Mint has a new update, System76 builds its own laptops, Kali goes undercover, the new 5.4 Kernel, and more!

    In security, we talk D-Link remote access.

    BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • Working on the stream
        • With Josh schedule packed, I gave streaming a try. Back to youtube it is since the barrier to entry was so low.
        • OBS is quite the software. Currently, we’re doing a streaming simple with an image. Nothing fancy, but as I got looking into the details, you can do so much more.
        • I didn’t want to rock the boat too much, but a Telegram, Discord and IRC chat monitor would be nifty, and something I want to look into for the future if we stick with youtube.
        • I know there are people out there that want an audio-only stream. For you all, I have a fix.
      • UBPorts on a Nexus 7 2013 (Wifi)
        • This was an interesting journey. I dusted off my Nexus 7 from a few years ago, plugged it in to charge, and about 30 minutes later, was installing UBPorts using their snap installer.
        • The bootloader was unlocked years ago, so I can’t recall exactly how I did my ADB magic, but I’ve had a few OSes on it over the years.
        • I’m just getting familiar with Ubuntu Touch, but it seems promising.
      • Installed a 1080p panel on my T450s
        • Fun times. For a little under $50, I bought a 1080p replacement panel for my T450s. I had been on the 900p panel since I bought it about two years ago, and finally got fed up with it. The discoloration that comes with TN panels finally wore me down.
        • This 1080p was supposed to be an IPS Field Replacement Unit, so, same same as the OEM screen, but turned out to be a 1080p TN, or low quality VA panel, at best.
        • Still 1080p, still more room, still a huge improvement, and for the price, I’m still happy.
    • Tony H 
      • This week I’ve put Mint onto an HP G62 Laptop with a 2.1 GHz AMD Phenom II Triple-Core Processor N830. This processor came out in December 2010 so the PC is nearly 9 years old. I used it at the LUG last week and the battery life despite being at full capacity (I suspect it is a replacement of the original) is a paltory 1.5-2 Hrs or less if playing video, and it runs quite walm. The top power on the CPU is 35w, compared to modern mobile processors which can be less than half of this processor. It’s probably destined to be passed onto my local homeless charity to give someone a new start in tech.
      • Continuing to get to grips with Ubuntu 19.10, thanks to Peter Jones I now have a half usable system with the Dash to Panel installed and on the bottom of the screen and the side dock hidden from view. Feels a little more like home, but it would be great if this was a one button in a menu somewhere to set it up without having to install all these additional functions to get it to work. Apart from this, it’s a great Linux OS as you would expect from Ubuntu, I can’t say I’ve had any issues with it at all in day to day use. 
      • Also continuing to Invest (code for spending all my money) on my new hobby of restoring Matchbox models. I bought a large consignment on Ebay and got a bargain with many 50’s and 60’s models and only a few of the later 1970’s (which are still nearly 50 years old). I’ve been buying tools and preparing to buy a small modelers spray booth, as well as buying materials for paint stripping and preparing the models for repainting. Starting to appreciate the time these YouTubers put in to the hobby and all the videoing and post production it takes. 
      • As of yesterday I actually completed my first restoration a Matchbox No28 Mk10 Jaguar if any one is interested.     

     

    • Moss 
      • I sold an ASUS MeMOPad to a listener; I hadn’t even put it up for sale, but he asked what I had that was cheap and I told him. It was a turkey of a tablet; I had such high hopes for it when I bought it. I got about $12 for it and bought some groceries.
      • Zorin OS 15 has just released their Lite version, with XFCE Desktop, and they did quite a lovely job on the desktop. I put it on my Kudu 3, and I kinda like it. Yes, I am now triple-booting the Kudu – Core, Ultimate, and Lite – but it’s all Zorin.
      • During a period of digital frustration, I remembered I had a free partition on my Galago Pro 2. I eased my nerves by taking a few hours and successfully installing Sabayon. Yes, it took a while. Yes, it’s Gentoo. But it’s so sweet…
      • I made an attempt to boot my inherited Linux box. Sadly, the password was not what I expected, so I couldn’t log into what was probably an old version of Fedora, so I attempted to install Linux Mint on it. I ran into another instance of the GRUB not being written properly, and I also could not get the CD drive to boot (I could have used my Super Grub 2 disk). I had some discussion with the Telegram group of people, mostly cryptodan and Peter Jones, and got frustrated so I put the box away for a while. I promise to get back to it. The box is pretty nice, a mini ATX with 16 Gb of RAM and a 120 Gb SSD on a Gigabyte motherboard.
      • I have added some tiers and a Donation link to my Sponsus page. Now to get some sponsors and donations. 
      • I found I had opened 2 accounts at ReverbNation sometime in 2014 and promptly forgotten about both; I’ve written RN to see if they can combine the two and then see if I can put the site to some use promoting my music. I did find a recording I didn’t think I had posted anywhere on one of the accounts.
      • I just celebrated my 3rd Anniversary…and Wednesday will be my mmphthy-mmph birthday. Distrohoppers’ Digest is set to be recorded on Wednesday, and Tony should have it out by Friday.

     

    • Joe
      • Listened to an Audio Drama/podcast.  2 Seasons of Wolverine.  
      • Also listened to Piers Anthony’s Bio Of a Space Tyrant
        • Most assuredly not a book for younger readers.  Based on the topics
          • Murder 
          • Piracy
          • Incest
          • Sex with people that I would consider underage
        • I did listen to all 6 books in the series and Anthony is one of my more liked authors.
        • He also writes all his books on linux machines since about 2000
        • Well read series
        • But in the end I am not sure I would recommend to readers.
        • I didn’t dislike it but I find it hard to suggest it for others
      •  Listening to the Dresden Files again, hoping that the next one comes out soon
      •  Replaced the keyboard on that convertible laptop
        • Also removed Linux and reinstalled Windows for my daughter
        • Had to install woeusb in order to get a functioning bootable Windows 10 usb stick
        • Then gave it to my eldest daughter and she gave her laptop to her sister
        • Who ruined another charging port on another tablet, the ASUS Transformer T102HA which I will be taking apart to see if it is an easy fix because it is an awesome device
        • That is 2 T100’s and a T102 that currently have that problem.  Looks like I need to learn how to fix it and get a hot air gun.
      • Also had a problem with one of my Dell Venue 11 keyboards where not all the keys were working
        • I had a spare keyboard with a bad battery so I did a swap between the two but for some reason the touchpad would not work(at least not with the battery connected)
        • So I pulled the touchpad off and swapped that from the one with bad keys
        • Still didn’t work
        • So I swapped the cables for the touchpad.
        • Still didn’t work
        • So I swapped the connector bracket that goes from the keyboard to the tablet, thinking it would be the last time I had to take it apart
        • It wasn’t, still didn’t work
        • Finally I swapped the mainboard hoping that wasn’t what was bad on the other keyboard and it works great(most of the time)
        • Still some issues sometimes on restart but that seems to be a problem with all keyboards for this device.  Just disconnect a reconnect a couple of times and everything works
        • About 7 hours worth of work total with testing and reseating between each step to make sure I had done things correctly.  Also I could have had it done much quicker if I had realized it was the mainboard first.
        • But hey I have 2 fully functioning keyboards again and I know a lot more about how that keyboard is put together.
        • Really need the extra battery power to make it through the day.
        • But I am still thinking about getting one of the soft keyboards without batteries.
      • Picked up a travel router
        • GL.iNet GL-AR300M-EXT 
        • Works good so far.  
        • Easytether install worked like a charm.  But t-mo seems to be detecting and throttling.  May be detecting the router. More testing required. More details in the innards.
    • Tony W
      • RAM upgrade on main/living room PC (why did I not do this before?)
      • Gaming fun: Native Linux and Proton games on Steam, PCSX2 Emulator
        • Native on Linux 
          • Team Fortress 2 (my kid plays this, I watched)
          • CS GO, No Room in Hell are MPO games I still plan to try
          • Was interested in Shadow of Mordr and Tomb Raider but too expensive
        • PCSX2 Emulator
          • Fun, works well
          • Had to change a couple of the defaults for Spiderman 2 
            • Changed graphics to Software vs hardware
        • Reversed axes for controllerProton: 
          • Underpowered machine: PC is an old Lenovo with i3 4th Gen, low profile 1GB Nvidia card, 8GB of Ram
          • Batman Arkham Origins – Unplayable due to lag in Steam/Proton.  I am sure it would have been fine on a more powerful PC. It did run OK in Windows
          • GTA San Andreas – Ran great in Proton, occasional crashing when loading a saved game.  Easy enough to kill with TOP and restart. Not a bi issue for me but I see how minor glitches like this might be annoying enough to make somebody dive back to Windows to play a game
          • Consensus on Proton, definitely awesome if you have a machine that can spare the overhead

    THE NEWS:

    • Linux Mint Monthly News ALL
      • “All 3 editions of Linux Mint 19.3 passed QA and we’ll be announcing the BETA release on Tuesday!”
      • Assuming that’s December 3rd.
      • New, unannounced changes to the software section, and three new apps are making their arrival.
      • System Reports will now give messages from the tray. This will give users access to workarounds, solutions  and information. This feature will also be used to announce the full release of 19.3 from within the BETA, and it’s being backported, so you’ll hear about it on 19.2 and previous as well (if you run updates on older releases)!
    • System76 will start designing and building their computers from the ground up in DenverMOSS
    • Kali Linux 2019.4 Released LEO
      • XFCE the new default desktop
      • kali-undercover changes your DE to look like Windows. Icons and all.
      • Our markdown overlords are winning. Kali’s docs are now in markdown!
      • BTRFS 
    • Kape Technologies buys PIA’s parent company (also owns ZenMate and CyberGhost VPNs – total over 2 million paying subscribers)MOSS
    • Kernel 5.4 is released Tony W LTS – last LTS was 4.19
      • Primary feature is a new kernel lockdown mode that aims to improve the separation of UID 0 (aka root) and the kernel.
      • Lots of AMD support added – 
        • Navi 12 and 14 GPUs
        • MD Arcturus graphics cards,
        • AMD Dali APU
        • AMD 2020 APU
      • Lots of added ARM support Snapdragon 855, a bunch of ARM based laptops (ASUS NovaGo, HP Envy X2 and the Lenovo Miix 630)
    • Is full Linux kernel support coming to Android? Google outlines its plans Joe
    • Librem 5 is shipping, First Impressions TONY W
      • Early adopter/developer stage
      • Some flaws that are expected to be fixed in future software updates
        • No audio in calls
        • Camera issues
        • Battery life “meh”
        • Gets really warm
        • Software generally alpha status
      • Former employees have expressed the company releases “disingenuous” updates
      • My opinions:
        • I am glad to hear the progress that some backers have the device in hand, and the early flaws don’t dampen my optimism
        • you REALLY have to believe in the Purism/Librem cause to justify $699 for this device, especially when Pinephone is coming soon at $149!!!  (300 Euros for Volla phone, *Check This Out)
    • Glimpse Released LEO
      • The 0.1.0 release is based on 2.10.12, instead of the current 2.10.14.
      • The Glimpse guys prefer Flatpak as the preferred way to install (it’s on top!)
      • Snap and AUR are in a separate community section.
      • Windows and Mac are also supported (same as GIMP)
    • US Student was building a Gentoo-based distro for ISIS MOSS

    SECURITY UPDATE: 

        • D-Link ‘Won’t Fix’ even more routers
          • The flaw (CVE-2019-16920) that D-Link won’t fix allows an attacker to bypass authentication entirely to get admin access to your router. This is very, very not good. 
          • You can mitigate the issue by turning off remote management, but that doesn’t stop the attack from happening from within your network. Please do yourself a favor and move to something else.
          • Models: DIR-866, DIR-655, DHP-1565, DIR-652, DAP-1533, DGL-5500, DIR-130, DIR-330, DIR-615, DIR-825, DIR-835, DIR-855L and DIR-862.
        • Mozilla Increasing Bug Bounty Payouts
          • Doubling, for critical, core and other Mozilla sites. 
          • And, tripling for Remote Code Execution on critical sites.
          • Firefox Monitor and Private Network are added to the list of Core Sites
        • Webmin Attacked by Mr. Roboto Botnet
          • A follow-up to Episode 316.
          • The vulnerability we were talking in that episode has been weaponized
          • Mr. Roboto, the botnet, is utilizing the flaw to be able to create a reverse shell, run commands, run files within URLs, DDoS, and self-uninstall.

    ANNOUNCEMENTS:

    • Next Show: Dec 15, 2019 – 2PM US Central Time

    WRAP-UP:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

    • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
    ]]>     full 1:15:38 4036     mintCast 318.5 – Syncing Files https://mintcast.org/mintcast-318-5-syncing-files/ Wed, 02 Oct 2019 06:09:46 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3942 And finally, community feedback!
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    In our Innards section, we cover backups like Rsync, Nextcloud and some underlying storage.

    And finally, community feedback!

    INNARDS:

    • Joe
      • Rsync
        • Used as the back end for most backup systems 
        • works on most operating systems
        • It has been around for 23 years!
        • Comes stock on nearly every linux operating system
        • I have used it in production on several systems for back ups or syncing data on request
        • fairly standard setup for the command 
          • rsync [options] from to
        • what makes it great is the way that it will remember where you left off with a broken or partial sync.
          • so if you lose your connection you can run the same command again and pick up where you left off
            • especially if you use -P which will allow you to watch the progress and continue from where you left off even if it is mid file
          • The -a flag is great as it preserves symbolic links so you will not get stuck in a loop the way that it was possible to do with scp
        • Plus for backups it will only move files that it can verify have changed which makes it faster and use less data.
          • It will check file sizes and time stamps to see if it needs to sync a new file
          • You can set it to instead check hashes for differences which is much slower but it will find all the changes
          • –checksum is the option to add for this
        • Great to mix with cron for automating backups on your own
          • timing can be a small issue if your backup runs long so don’t set it up to run every minute
      • Resilio sync/btsync/bittorrent sync
        • Does not use rsync
        • uses the bittorrent protocol
        • Started out as bittorrent sync but everyone called it btsync and then when they tried to switch to a paid model they changed to resilio sync
        • The setup is very similar to other syncing programs.  Install the software and setup the user permissions and the places that it will have access to
          • After setup you pick the folders that you want to share
          • then you choose to share it and either a link a code or a qr code is generated
          • you add this to resilio sync on another machine or multiple machines
          • you can choose to limit this by making a single use code or a code that expires after a few days or by leaving it open
          • you can also choose if the other clients will have write permissions on the data or just read
          • you can limit it further on systems by controlling the user permissions and or setting up resilio under its own user
        • Works across multiple OS’s including android
        • The more nodes that you have setup with the data that you are syncing the faster it will be synced across devices.
        • it is self hosted so your data will only be on your computers
        • as for the bittorrent protocol here is how it works
          • Files within the set shared space are broken into small parts then shared then reassembled on the “client side” when all portions are received
          • the smaller files are easier to send then larger files would be
          • so you could be downloading multiple small portions from separate locations at the same time which greatly increases speed based on how many nodes that you have
          • Much like with torrents it is possible for none of the nodes to have a complete copy and still to get a complete copy on all the systems by the end as long as all portions are distributed.
        • it is possible to backup an entire system with resilio sync if you give the group or user enough permissions or run it as root.  
        • better for files that you want to backup but there are pitfalls
          • if you have write permissions on all the nodes then if one of them gets corrupt it will copy across all the systems and all will be corrupt
        • Great to run commands on your home system
          • very tinkery tool when used this way
          • just as an example, set up a cron script to execute a bash script every minute, this bash script looks for a file within the btsync location.  If it is there then you run the commands placed within this file and rename the file with a date stamp so that it is not picked up again(you can also get creative with the output if you want)
          • it is seriously a one line command ‘bash -i /path/to/filename >> filename2’ to execute commands and record output and then mv the filename to doneFilename then echo filename2 >> doneFilename and rm filename2
    • Leo
      • The Nextcloud setup was too easy! (For someone that tinkers all the time)
        • sudo snap install nextcloud
        • sudo nextcloud.manual-install leo password
        • sudo nextcloud.occ config:system:set trusted_domains 1 –value=domainname
        • sudo nextcloud.enable-https self-signed
      • If you’re storing your files on external storage like myself, you’ll need to install a removable media plugin.
        • sudo snap connect nextcloud:removable-media
      • The config file lives at
        • sudo nano /var/snap/nextcloud/current/nextcloud/config/config.php
      • Finally, move your data to the new place
        • sudo mv /var/snap/nextcloud/common/nextcloud/data /media/nextcloud/data
      • Nextcloud auto backups
      • In the settings, there is an Auto Upload Photos/Videos toggle.
      • Underneath, define where you want the folder to live, then turn the toggle on. Like magic, Nextcloud starts to suck up all of the files you specify!
      • I haven’t tried the feature with anything other than Photos and Videos, but for a phone, those are typically the types of files you’re trying to backup.
      • For the desktop, the sync is similar. For every device I’ve installed the Nextcloud client on, I have the Desktop directory synced across all the devices. This is fantastic for me since that’s where all my working files go. I just have to ensure that the client is on to do the sync and my files are there, updated, and ready to be edited.
      • Thoughts
      • Overall, the setup is easy if you’ve played with stuff like this before. But, compared to a traditional setup with a manual install of a database, php and webserver, it was extremely easy.
      • The best part of the entire setup is that I’m bad at remembering to do manually backup files with a drag and drop. So, as long as they’re in the right place, I don’t have to do anything!

     

    • Tony W
    • DISCLAIMER before beginning: This is from a beginner’s perspective.
      • RAID, ZFS Z pools
        • Reasons to use:
          • Allow data redundancy across multiple drives/partitions
          • Can simply mirror a drive
          • Windows has a version of this
          • Use multiple drives/partitions as one volume
        • Typically used for server but can be used for home machines
        • Still recommend backup to other machine or drive
      • RAID
        • RAID can be hardware or software RAID 
          • Hardware RAID is a bit legacy
        • Ubuntu offers mdadm for software RAID management
        • RAID 0 (Disk striping): RAID 0 splits data across any number of disks allowing higher data throughput. …
        • RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring): …
        • RAID 5 (Striping with parity): …
        • RAID 6 (Striping with double parity): …
        • RAID 10 (Striping + Mirroring):
        • Doesn’t seem to be much reason to use software RAID mdadm over ZFS?
        • Windows offers mirrored volume, similar to RAID 1
      • ZFS 
        • Supported natively in Ubuntu 18.04
        • FREENAS uses ZFS
        • ZFS Pools are equivalent of RAID levels

    VIBRATIONS:

    Tony – Peter Jones on Telegram writes

    Really sorry, but didn’t enjoy this episode (317.5). Toyam spoke very passionately, but didn’t seem the right kind of distro to get a guest on about based on the MintCast audience. Anyway. I’m sure others loved it. And I can’t enjoy every episode!

    I responded 

    [In reply to Peter Jones]

    I can see where you are coming from on the type of distro that Void is, but I think that the interview does highlight that it is possible to get involved with Linux projects, and the amount of work that the maintainers of Distros and the software we use on a day to day basis do so we get to use fantastic software. Mint might be an easier distro for a beginner to use but the work that has gone into it is as much if not more. Also it highlights that many of these distros and software development projects are running on very few people making it all happen. My feeling is even if you are not a coder is that there are many ways you can support, from beta testing and reporting bugs, to getting involved with documentation or creating wallpapers. If you feel that’s not possible then send the project a couple of dollars to help the cause and show your appreciation, or if you can’t even afford that, just send a message to say thank you for the work they are doing.

    Peter replied

    Hi, running a website and forum I understand the small team thing. Thanks for reading my feedback though and you make fair comments.

    Stephen Heckler also commented on this episode:

    I agree with Peter on this one, Void is pretty niche, and Toyam’s take on it even more so due to being a maintainer. mintCast has always been pretty broad within the Linux world and approachable

    Leo – A discussion about Gentoo and compiling in Telegram

    Londoner writes:

    BTW, after I did Gentoo I installed Plasma base and some other packages. Compiling the Falkon browser (or rather qtwebengine) took 4 days on my i7 desktop! Thought it would never finish

    Leo

    The Juno Computer Gemini was finally reviewed by Oliver Kelly!

    Oliver writes:

    I reached out to them asked if I can help promote them as a company and write about them, they then offered to loan a laptop to review. They paid for shipping the laptop and collection. No pressure to write a positive review, to be fair I should have stated, but genuinely was a really nice laptop but £770 is steep for me for how it feels compared to my works xps , like I said , that’s the only other laptop I have to compare quality and feel to.

    Writeup Link: https://0lzi.tk/episode-009-gemini15/

    Tony H – Stan R – From tonight’s chat room

    The new web page has really improved since the last show. It seemed that nothing was working. This time around things on web page seem much more usable to me.

    Me – Yes Josh has put a lot of work in to get it working right

    Stan – I had sent a number of complaining messages, then within a few hours it was either fixed or I realized what I was doing wrong.

    Stan has also asked if it would be possible to put the show timer on the main page of the site.

    CHECK THIS OUT:

    ANNOUNCEMENTS:

    Next episode will be Sunday October 6th, 2PM CDT, 7PM UTC

    WRAP-UP:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

    • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
    ]]>     full 50:54 3942     mintCast 318.5 – Syncing Files (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-318-5-syncing-files-mp3/ Wed, 02 Oct 2019 06:07:15 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3940 And finally, community feedback!
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    In our Innards section, we cover backups like Rsync, Nextcloud and some underlying storage.

    And finally, community feedback!

    INNARDS:

    • Joe
      • Rsync
        • Used as the back end for most backup systems 
        • works on most operating systems
        • It has been around for 23 years!
        • Comes stock on nearly every linux operating system
        • I have used it in production on several systems for back ups or syncing data on request
        • fairly standard setup for the command 
          • rsync [options] from to
        • what makes it great is the way that it will remember where you left off with a broken or partial sync.
          • so if you lose your connection you can run the same command again and pick up where you left off
            • especially if you use -P which will allow you to watch the progress and continue from where you left off even if it is mid file
          • The -a flag is great as it preserves symbolic links so you will not get stuck in a loop the way that it was possible to do with scp
        • Plus for backups it will only move files that it can verify have changed which makes it faster and use less data.
          • It will check file sizes and time stamps to see if it needs to sync a new file
          • You can set it to instead check hashes for differences which is much slower but it will find all the changes
          • –checksum is the option to add for this
        • Great to mix with cron for automating backups on your own
          • timing can be a small issue if your backup runs long so don’t set it up to run every minute
      • Resilio sync/btsync/bittorrent sync
        • Does not use rsync
        • uses the bittorrent protocol
        • Started out as bittorrent sync but everyone called it btsync and then when they tried to switch to a paid model they changed to resilio sync
        • The setup is very similar to other syncing programs.  Install the software and setup the user permissions and the places that it will have access to
          • After setup you pick the folders that you want to share
          • then you choose to share it and either a link a code or a qr code is generated
          • you add this to resilio sync on another machine or multiple machines
          • you can choose to limit this by making a single use code or a code that expires after a few days or by leaving it open
          • you can also choose if the other clients will have write permissions on the data or just read
          • you can limit it further on systems by controlling the user permissions and or setting up resilio under its own user
        • Works across multiple OS’s including android
        • The more nodes that you have setup with the data that you are syncing the faster it will be synced across devices.
        • it is self hosted so your data will only be on your computers
        • as for the bittorrent protocol here is how it works
          • Files within the set shared space are broken into small parts then shared then reassembled on the “client side” when all portions are received
          • the smaller files are easier to send then larger files would be
          • so you could be downloading multiple small portions from separate locations at the same time which greatly increases speed based on how many nodes that you have
          • Much like with torrents it is possible for none of the nodes to have a complete copy and still to get a complete copy on all the systems by the end as long as all portions are distributed.
        • it is possible to backup an entire system with resilio sync if you give the group or user enough permissions or run it as root.  
        • better for files that you want to backup but there are pitfalls
          • if you have write permissions on all the nodes then if one of them gets corrupt it will copy across all the systems and all will be corrupt
        • Great to run commands on your home system
          • very tinkery tool when used this way
          • just as an example, set up a cron script to execute a bash script every minute, this bash script looks for a file within the btsync location.  If it is there then you run the commands placed within this file and rename the file with a date stamp so that it is not picked up again(you can also get creative with the output if you want)
          • it is seriously a one line command ‘bash -i /path/to/filename >> filename2’ to execute commands and record output and then mv the filename to doneFilename then echo filename2 >> doneFilename and rm filename2
    • Leo
      • The Nextcloud setup was too easy! (For someone that tinkers all the time)
        • sudo snap install nextcloud
        • sudo nextcloud.manual-install leo password
        • sudo nextcloud.occ config:system:set trusted_domains 1 –value=domainname
        • sudo nextcloud.enable-https self-signed
      • If you’re storing your files on external storage like myself, you’ll need to install a removable media plugin.
        • sudo snap connect nextcloud:removable-media
      • The config file lives at
        • sudo nano /var/snap/nextcloud/current/nextcloud/config/config.php
      • Finally, move your data to the new place
        • sudo mv /var/snap/nextcloud/common/nextcloud/data /media/nextcloud/data
      • Nextcloud auto backups
      • In the settings, there is an Auto Upload Photos/Videos toggle.
      • Underneath, define where you want the folder to live, then turn the toggle on. Like magic, Nextcloud starts to suck up all of the files you specify!
      • I haven’t tried the feature with anything other than Photos and Videos, but for a phone, those are typically the types of files you’re trying to backup.
      • For the desktop, the sync is similar. For every device I’ve installed the Nextcloud client on, I have the Desktop directory synced across all the devices. This is fantastic for me since that’s where all my working files go. I just have to ensure that the client is on to do the sync and my files are there, updated, and ready to be edited.
      • Thoughts
      • Overall, the setup is easy if you’ve played with stuff like this before. But, compared to a traditional setup with a manual install of a database, php and webserver, it was extremely easy.
      • The best part of the entire setup is that I’m bad at remembering to do manually backup files with a drag and drop. So, as long as they’re in the right place, I don’t have to do anything!

     

    • Tony W
    • DISCLAIMER before beginning: This is from a beginner’s perspective.
      • RAID, ZFS Z pools
        • Reasons to use:
          • Allow data redundancy across multiple drives/partitions
          • Can simply mirror a drive
          • Windows has a version of this
          • Use multiple drives/partitions as one volume
        • Typically used for server but can be used for home machines
        • Still recommend backup to other machine or drive
      • RAID
        • RAID can be hardware or software RAID 
          • Hardware RAID is a bit legacy
        • Ubuntu offers mdadm for software RAID management
        • RAID 0 (Disk striping): RAID 0 splits data across any number of disks allowing higher data throughput. …
        • RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring): …
        • RAID 5 (Striping with parity): …
        • RAID 6 (Striping with double parity): …
        • RAID 10 (Striping + Mirroring):
        • Doesn’t seem to be much reason to use software RAID mdadm over ZFS?
        • Windows offers mirrored volume, similar to RAID 1
      • ZFS 
        • Supported natively in Ubuntu 18.04
        • FREENAS uses ZFS
        • ZFS Pools are equivalent of RAID levels

    VIBRATIONS:

    Tony – Peter Jones on Telegram writes

    Really sorry, but didn’t enjoy this episode (317.5). Toyam spoke very passionately, but didn’t seem the right kind of distro to get a guest on about based on the MintCast audience. Anyway. I’m sure others loved it. And I can’t enjoy every episode!

    I responded 

    [In reply to Peter Jones]

    I can see where you are coming from on the type of distro that Void is, but I think that the interview does highlight that it is possible to get involved with Linux projects, and the amount of work that the maintainers of Distros and the software we use on a day to day basis do so we get to use fantastic software. Mint might be an easier distro for a beginner to use but the work that has gone into it is as much if not more. Also it highlights that many of these distros and software development projects are running on very few people making it all happen. My feeling is even if you are not a coder is that there are many ways you can support, from beta testing and reporting bugs, to getting involved with documentation or creating wallpapers. If you feel that’s not possible then send the project a couple of dollars to help the cause and show your appreciation, or if you can’t even afford that, just send a message to say thank you for the work they are doing.

    Peter replied

    Hi, running a website and forum I understand the small team thing. Thanks for reading my feedback though and you make fair comments.

    Stephen Heckler also commented on this episode:

    I agree with Peter on this one, Void is pretty niche, and Toyam’s take on it even more so due to being a maintainer. mintCast has always been pretty broad within the Linux world and approachable

    Leo – A discussion about Gentoo and compiling in Telegram

    Londoner writes:

    BTW, after I did Gentoo I installed Plasma base and some other packages. Compiling the Falkon browser (or rather qtwebengine) took 4 days on my i7 desktop! Thought it would never finish

    Leo

    The Juno Computer Gemini was finally reviewed by Oliver Kelly!

    Oliver writes:

    I reached out to them asked if I can help promote them as a company and write about them, they then offered to loan a laptop to review. They paid for shipping the laptop and collection. No pressure to write a positive review, to be fair I should have stated, but genuinely was a really nice laptop but £770 is steep for me for how it feels compared to my works xps , like I said , that’s the only other laptop I have to compare quality and feel to.

    Writeup Link: https://0lzi.tk/episode-009-gemini15/

    Tony H – Stan R – From tonight’s chat room

    The new web page has really improved since the last show. It seemed that nothing was working. This time around things on web page seem much more usable to me.

    Me – Yes Josh has put a lot of work in to get it working right

    Stan – I had sent a number of complaining messages, then within a few hours it was either fixed or I realized what I was doing wrong.

    Stan has also asked if it would be possible to put the show timer on the main page of the site.

    CHECK THIS OUT:

    ANNOUNCEMENTS:

    Next episode will be Sunday October 6th, 2PM CDT, 7PM UTC

    WRAP-UP:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

    • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
    ]]>     full 54:34 3940     mintCast 317 – Yak Shaving https://mintcast.org/mintcast-317-yak-shaving/ Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:57:14 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3880 Then, in our news we cover the Linux Mint Monthly News, exFAT in the kernel, iPhone and Android exploits and the new Pinebook Pro
    In security, we talk Firefox and why you should give it another try
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    This week, in our Wanderings, Toyam (Void Linux maintainer) shaves a yak and gets to soldering, I blew up and recovered my Mint install, Tony’s been editing audio and LUGing, Josh has been playing with Windows Subsystem for Linux , and Joe finally gets the Note 10

    Then, in our news we cover the Linux Mint Monthly News, exFAT in the kernel, iPhone and Android exploits and the new Pinebook Pro

    In security, we talk Firefox and why you should give it another try

    WANDERINGS:

    • Toyam
      • Yak shaving: Need a calendar for my household, to share appointments and other plans, and can’t be Google, must work from the CLI…. Oh also should be offline compatible.
        • During a class last year I wrote the frontend for this calendar, but didn’t have a satisfactory backend.
        • So started investigating Wails, which lets you, like Electron, use javascript for your frontend, but Wails lets you build a golang backend.
          • Got Wails to support Void Linux.
          • But still working on linking my frontend with their backend.
      • Soldered parts onto a PCB I previously designed. I now regret choosing small parts (0402).
    • Leo
      • Broke my desktop Mint install by using ppa-purge for the padoka PPA so I can test the oibaf PPA for performance differences on my graphics card. Didn’t pay attention to what it was going to uninstall. It even makes you type in “Yes, do as I say!” Turns out, it uninstalled EVERYTHING. I watched icons disappear from Plank one-by-one. Checked the terminal and my jaw dropped. CTRL+C couldn’t save me here. SSDs are brutal for mistakes like this.
        • Luckily I don’t tinker with Mint on my laptop that way, or it could have been a bigger issue!
        • Timeshift saves the day.
        • Ended up reinstalling anyway since I still wanted to tinker with oibaf and didn’t want to go through recovery again. Backed up home, and started fresh.
      • Got a new mechanical keyboard for $15 after using some amazon credit that I didn’t know what to do with. Ended up buying a Velocifire 78-key keyboard with Outemu brown switches. They’re a little loud for my tastes, but it’s growing on me.
    • Tony H 
      • Editing the Audio for the last show, and was happy to say that it was the best effort I’ve made with the editing since I joined the show. For anyone out there trying to get to grips with audio recording and editing, stick with it as the only way you learn how it works is by doing it, you will find what works for you and your set up. We have a production guide that was written by Rob and Issac, and has been modified by us since, but you sometimes have to go with what works with the audio you have to work on and the setup that you have.
      • So for the next Distrohoppers digest review I’ve installed and been playing with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, I seem to be developing a liking for rolling distributions. I’m also developing a liking for XFCE and installed this as the DE again as I had been using it in EndeavourOS.
      • We had the last meeting at the current makerspace venue which involved mainly taking away the equipment we wanted to transfer to the new venue (my Garage) over the next few weeks we will be reconnecting with our Linux roots and advertising the Saturday meetings in the local library as our LUG as it was in the old days. There maybe an opportunity to install the 3D printer at the library at a later date but for now we need to work on making my Garage fit to use the printer and Laser cutter at my place.
      • Getting more donations of PC’s, Les gave me a Tower from his uncle who passed away recently, this will be passed on to a charity after having Linux Mint 19.2 XFCE installed as its light on memory at only 2Gb of RAM.
      • Setting up a Dell Optiplex 7010 i5 with 8Gb Ram 240Gb SSD (Mint 19.2 Mate) and a 250Gb HDD (windows 10) For my better Half. Her old Pentium Dual core was well past its sell by date having Mint 17.3 and Windows 7 on a 160Gb HDD in dual boot mode. I set up Libreoffice Writer to ribbon mode as she uses MS Office at work so is more used to that interface. Her first comment once she went on line was that she can play some of the games that stopped working on the old PC due to an outdated Flash codec. One happy Wife, Life is Good 🙂  
      • Broke my phone today 🙁
    • Josh
      • Been playing around with WSL. I did use it back in the BETA stages but it’s much improved now.
      • I’ve found a VSCode plugin that allows you to edit files in folders that are within WSL. This allows me to do EduBlocks development in Windows. 
      • It’s quite obvious that this could now replace Linux for me and I do wonder what we will see in 10 years. Will linux distros be as popular or will Windows WSL get even better and be more popular?
      • Found a new OS called “CloudReady” from Neverware that lets you turn any PC into a Chromebook. It’s super cool!
      • I returned to school this week 🙁
      • The printed magazines are live! We’ve had so many orders, considering we thought we’d get none, we’re really happy. 
      • I got a new GPU. I opted for an Asus OC Nvidia RTX 2060. It’s amazing, the drivers actually work properly *cough AMD* and so far my experience of Nvidia is great. Real Time Ray Tracing is super cool, even though it’s not really implemented in anything. 
    • Joe
      • Have been taking a break from social media 
        • I am even behind on my podcast listening.
      • Have been listening to the wheel of time again
      • Got the Galaxy Note 10 plus
        • Still think it cost way too much but the wife convinced me to get it
        • Will come up with a full review
        • Android Dex is nice, works very well and easy
        • Linux on dex is not yet available for the Note 10+
        • The screen is brilliant. 
        • Transferred a 60 gig of data over wifi to the device very easily
        • Didnt even heat up using resilio sync with 60+ gb of data
        • Usb c dock worked without a hitch as did displaylink
          • Although Dex does not work over display link
        • Also want to test steam link with android on dex
      • Fixed an m.2 adapter with a faulty usb 3.0 b connection
      • Testing anlinux on the note 10+
        • It works very smooth, no hitches or delays that i have seen
        • Using ubuntu but it feels a lot more like trying to setup arch
          • Very minimal install 
          • Installed mate
          • Installed nautilus
          • Created a new user and attempted to install vlc
          • VLC installed but still will not launch
          • Further testing required
      • One of the few issues that i have found with my migration to the new phone is that a lot of my settings in podkicker did not migrate, although all of my subscriptions did so i have ended up with a backlog of pocasts

    NEWS:

    SECURITY UPDATE:

    • Firefox 69 blocks trackers by default!
      • By using the standard tracking profile built into the browser, Firefox 69 will block mainly 3rd party cookies: this means ads and their trackers.
      • Cryptominers are blocked by default!
      • Autoplay videos will be blocked by default, as well, and you can control how. Nothing at all, no audio only, or allow.
      • Firefox is also blocking Flash from automatically running without your explicit permission. The “Always activate” option has been removed.
      • This is for all platforms you can run Firefox on, not just Linux! That includes Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS.
      • New logo coming in 70!

    WRAP-UP:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

    • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
    ]]>     full 1:05:18 3880     mintCast 317 – Yak Shaving (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-317-yak-shaving-mp3/ Wed, 11 Sep 2019 05:55:34 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3878 Then, in our news we cover the Linux Mint Monthly News, exFAT in the kernel, iPhone and Android exploits and the new Pinebook Pro
    In security, we talk Firefox and why you should give it another try
    Download
    ]]>

    Download

    This week, in our Wanderings, Toyam (Void Linux maintainer) shaves a yak and gets to soldering, I blew up and recovered my Mint install, Tony’s been editing audio and LUGing, Josh has been playing with Windows Subsystem for Linux , and Joe finally gets the Note 10

    Then, in our news we cover the Linux Mint Monthly News, exFAT in the kernel, iPhone and Android exploits and the new Pinebook Pro

    In security, we talk Firefox and why you should give it another try

    WANDERINGS:

    • Toyam
      • Yak shaving: Need a calendar for my household, to share appointments and other plans, and can’t be Google, must work from the CLI…. Oh also should be offline compatible.
        • During a class last year I wrote the frontend for this calendar, but didn’t have a satisfactory backend.
        • So started investigating Wails, which lets you, like Electron, use javascript for your frontend, but Wails lets you build a golang backend.
          • Got Wails to support Void Linux.
          • But still working on linking my frontend with their backend.
      • Soldered parts onto a PCB I previously designed. I now regret choosing small parts (0402).
    • Leo
      • Broke my desktop Mint install by using ppa-purge for the padoka PPA so I can test the oibaf PPA for performance differences on my graphics card. Didn’t pay attention to what it was going to uninstall. It even makes you type in “Yes, do as I say!” Turns out, it uninstalled EVERYTHING. I watched icons disappear from Plank one-by-one. Checked the terminal and my jaw dropped. CTRL+C couldn’t save me here. SSDs are brutal for mistakes like this.
        • Luckily I don’t tinker with Mint on my laptop that way, or it could have been a bigger issue!
        • Timeshift saves the day.
        • Ended up reinstalling anyway since I still wanted to tinker with oibaf and didn’t want to go through recovery again. Backed up home, and started fresh.
      • Got a new mechanical keyboard for $15 after using some amazon credit that I didn’t know what to do with. Ended up buying a Velocifire 78-key keyboard with Outemu brown switches. They’re a little loud for my tastes, but it’s growing on me.
    • Tony H 
      • Editing the Audio for the last show, and was happy to say that it was the best effort I’ve made with the editing since I joined the show. For anyone out there trying to get to grips with audio recording and editing, stick with it as the only way you learn how it works is by doing it, you will find what works for you and your set up. We have a production guide that was written by Rob and Issac, and has been modified by us since, but you sometimes have to go with what works with the audio you have to work on and the setup that you have.
      • So for the next Distrohoppers digest review I’ve installed and been playing with OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, I seem to be developing a liking for rolling distributions. I’m also developing a liking for XFCE and installed this as the DE again as I had been using it in EndeavourOS.
      • We had the last meeting at the current makerspace venue which involved mainly taking away the equipment we wanted to transfer to the new venue (my Garage) over the next few weeks we will be reconnecting with our Linux roots and advertising the Saturday meetings in the local library as our LUG as it was in the old days. There maybe an opportunity to install the 3D printer at the library at a later date but for now we need to work on making my Garage fit to use the printer and Laser cutter at my place.
      • Getting more donations of PC’s, Les gave me a Tower from his uncle who passed away recently, this will be passed on to a charity after having Linux Mint 19.2 XFCE installed as its light on memory at only 2Gb of RAM.
      • Setting up a Dell Optiplex 7010 i5 with 8Gb Ram 240Gb SSD (Mint 19.2 Mate) and a 250Gb HDD (windows 10) For my better Half. Her old Pentium Dual core was well past its sell by date having Mint 17.3 and Windows 7 on a 160Gb HDD in dual boot mode. I set up Libreoffice Writer to ribbon mode as she uses MS Office at work so is more used to that interface. Her first comment once she went on line was that she can play some of the games that stopped working on the old PC due to an outdated Flash codec. One happy Wife, Life is Good 🙂  
      • Broke my phone today 🙁
    • Josh
      • Been playing around with WSL. I did use it back in the BETA stages but it’s much improved now.
      • I’ve found a VSCode plugin that allows you to edit files in folders that are within WSL. This allows me to do EduBlocks development in Windows. 
      • It’s quite obvious that this could now replace Linux for me and I do wonder what we will see in 10 years. Will linux distros be as popular or will Windows WSL get even better and be more popular?
      • Found a new OS called “CloudReady” from Neverware that lets you turn any PC into a Chromebook. It’s super cool!
      • I returned to school this week 🙁
      • The printed magazines are live! We’ve had so many orders, considering we thought we’d get none, we’re really happy. 
      • I got a new GPU. I opted for an Asus OC Nvidia RTX 2060. It’s amazing, the drivers actually work properly *cough AMD* and so far my experience of Nvidia is great. Real Time Ray Tracing is super cool, even though it’s not really implemented in anything. 
    • Joe
      • Have been taking a break from social media 
        • I am even behind on my podcast listening.
      • Have been listening to the wheel of time again
      • Got the Galaxy Note 10 plus
        • Still think it cost way too much but the wife convinced me to get it
        • Will come up with a full review
        • Android Dex is nice, works very well and easy
        • Linux on dex is not yet available for the Note 10+
        • The screen is brilliant. 
        • Transferred a 60 gig of data over wifi to the device very easily
        • Didnt even heat up using resilio sync with 60+ gb of data
        • Usb c dock worked without a hitch as did displaylink
          • Although Dex does not work over display link
        • Also want to test steam link with android on dex
      • Fixed an m.2 adapter with a faulty usb 3.0 b connection
      • Testing anlinux on the note 10+
        • It works very smooth, no hitches or delays that i have seen
        • Using ubuntu but it feels a lot more like trying to setup arch
          • Very minimal install 
          • Installed mate
          • Installed nautilus
          • Created a new user and attempted to install vlc
          • VLC installed but still will not launch
          • Further testing required
      • One of the few issues that i have found with my migration to the new phone is that a lot of my settings in podkicker did not migrate, although all of my subscriptions did so i have ended up with a backlog of pocasts

    NEWS:

    SECURITY UPDATE:

    • Firefox 69 blocks trackers by default!
      • By using the standard tracking profile built into the browser, Firefox 69 will block mainly 3rd party cookies: this means ads and their trackers.
      • Cryptominers are blocked by default!
      • Autoplay videos will be blocked by default, as well, and you can control how. Nothing at all, no audio only, or allow.
      • Firefox is also blocking Flash from automatically running without your explicit permission. The “Always activate” option has been removed.
      • This is for all platforms you can run Firefox on, not just Linux! That includes Windows, Android, MacOS and iOS.
      • New logo coming in 70!

    WRAP-UP:

    Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

    • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
    • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
    • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
    • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
    ]]>     full 1:09:01 3878     mintCast 217 – Android on your PC https://mintcast.org/mintcast-217-android-on-your-pc/ Fri, 30 Jan 2015 03:02:07 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2928 217] Download

    News:

    Android on your PC

    Website:

    Tip:

    Pre-Show Music:

    Podcast Announcements:

    More Information:

    Hosts: Rob, Scott, and Joe
    Live Stream every other Sunday 2:00 p.m.(Central): mintcast.org/livestream

    Contact Us:

    More Linux Mint info: website, blog, forums, community

    Credits:

    Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). Podcast bumpers provided by Oscar. 

    ]]>     full 2928     Episode 93: Podcatchers https://mintcast.org/episode-93-podcatchers/ Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:04:21 +0000 http://www.mintcast.org/?p=1812

    News:

    • The French are doing something right, with open source. (h-online.com)

    The Main Topic: Podcatchers

    Desktop:

    Android:

    Featured Website:

    Tip:

    Your browser does not support the audio element.

    MP3:
    OGG:

    More Information:

    Hosts:: James, Rob, Scott, Harrison

    Subscribe: [iTunes] [Zune] [RSS MP3] [RSS OGG]

    Contact Us:

    Forum: forums.linuxmint.com

    Email: mintcast@mintcast.org

    Phone:1-832-514-2278

    Twitter: @mintCast @Linux_Mint @3dbeef @jamescoyner @txhawkins

    IRC: irc.spotchat.org – #mintcast

    Google+: mintCast

    More Linux Mint info: website, blog, forums, community

    Credits: Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast’s bumpers were provided by Oscar.

    ]]>     full 1812     Google sends cease-and-desist to Android ROM modder https://mintcast.org/google-sends-cease-and-desist-to-android-rom-modder/ Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:09:26 +0000 http://www.mintcast.org/?p=326 I recently read this story over at engadget mobile and couldn’t help but think this sort of thing really hurts the Android scene. I know CyanogenMod was in the wrong because he was re-distributing non open source programs. (Marketplace, youtube, maps, etc.) Google did give him the go ahead so long as he took those programs out. But here is where I really get worked up about this.
    1. Why aren’t those programs open source?
    2. If the ROM only runs on Google devices wouldn’t the people already have “licensing” to run the software?
    3. I have been using Windows Mobile for 4+ years and have downloaded countless “cooked” ROMs including programs that I am sure were not open source nor were they licensed for my phone. And I have never see a ROM creator get a cease-and-desist from Microsoft to stop distributing their OS or programs provided. I have seen some ROM creators get cease-and-desist for including paid programs, but never from Microsoft. There are quite a few that even include Microsoft Voice Dial in their ROMs which isn’t free and only licensed for certain phones.
    Now does this make Microsoft more open than Google? No. Maybe Microsoft just doesn’t care because they are working on a new phone OS. But even then, my phone currently has Windows Mobile 6.5 which isn’t even due out till next month and there have been 6.5 ROMs since before it was announced.
    I honestly think the flexibility and non-threatening nature of Windows Mobile has been the only thing that lets it survive. I think the Windows Mobile (now called Windows Phone) has a bigger feature set and better hardware available than any other mobile phone OS. But the OS just sucks when it comes to usability.
    If Google really wants Android to make a big splash with the smart phone market they need to stop acting like Apple and a bit more like Microsoft. Especially when you say your OS is “open”.
    What do you guys think?

    ]]>     326