June 10, 2020News, OGG, Podcast

mintCast 336.5 – Taking Control

In our Innards section, we talk to Erik the Engineer

And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions

Linux Innards – Erik Lietz

What was your first Linux experience?

I’ve always been looking at non-Microsoft systems. Started with Apple IIe and then Macs while young. Linux specifically I’ve had a couple of them… In college we had Sun Microsystems – Solaris in the computer labs, running StarOffice. Later in college my roommate had RedHat – but he lost me when he said “look I can change the speed on the CPU fan”.

Then running only Windows until early 2019 when researching what to do with Windows 7 end of life. Windows 10 was not an option – update during client meeting.

What was the very first Linux distro you ran?

Zorin OS, which was advertised as a Windows 7 replacement.

Went through the distro search
- Ubuntu
- the Ubuntu flavors, particularly MATE
- Elementary
- Mint

What’s a typical workflow for you entail?

Office documents – LibreOffice for word processing and spreadsheets
PDF editing – almost all of our final products to clients, regulators, contractors are all submitted electronically
Telegram – internal communication, internal teams
Email – thunderbird
Design programs –
- AutoCAD
- Carlson 3D
- Google Earth
- Government programs
Zoom – client review meetings w/ CAD designs

Tell us more about your engineering setup. Why Linux Mint?

Engineering Business

Mint – familiarity with the desktop, and it just works – reliability

Does Linux do everything you need in a system?

No, unfortunately, but it is close and getting closer
- CAD and 3D design software is not well represented on Linux.
- Our accounting software is web browser based, but limited to Internet Explorer or Edge due to programming.
More traditional businesses software it would be quite easy and reliable
- especially if you mainly use Office type documents

Do you do any Linux Gaming?

No I don’t. I don’t have much free time outside of the business and family.

Do you contribute to the community?

I’m active on the mintCast Telegram group. Posting on the Mint Forum. I had one laptop which had a misbehaving WiFi card. I was able to use the forums to get it fixed but it wouldn’t stick after a reboot, but went back and forth with some of the forums to get it to work for good. I have done some beta testing on LMDE 4 and some of the Ubuntu 20.04 releases.

Community as a whole – AWESOME!

Is there any piece of Linux and open source software, other than a browser, you could not live without?

Linux software would be MasterPDF, which is a competitor to Adobe Acrobat.
Open source is BitWarden, I have way too many passwords to keep track of and BitWarden is by far my most favorite password manager.

How has your experience been using LibreOffice? Have you encountered issues with compatibility for MS Office docs?

I and my staff have really liked using LibreOffice.

Still save documents in Microsoft format for compatibility outside of the office
LibreOffice actually has more flexibility with how documents are setup, appearance and formatting
Automatic numbering in Writer is awkward, but much less than in MS Word
The biggest issue we have is with Macros in Calc – government produced design spreadsheets

Closing thoughts for the audience, just for the folks that are sick and tired of Windows and want something faster and more secure.

Linux allowed us to take back our IT from third parties. The stability of Linux and allowing for you to control updates is a game changer.

Vibrations from the Ether

Michael

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy7Kah3WzqrEjsuvhT46fr28Q11oa5ZoI

Leo’s response

Jim Daldry

sudo chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

- Leo’s Response

Bill

Mike F

John Wallis (2)

https://itsfoss.com/fix-no-wireless-network-ubuntu/

# Configuration file for setting network variables. Please note these settings
# override /etc/sysctl.conf and /etc/sysctl.d. If you prefer to use
# /etc/sysctl.conf, please adjust IPT_SYSCTL in /etc/default/ufw. See
# Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt in the kernel source code for more
# information.

Added the Martians entries to /etc/ufw/sysctl.conf.

Leo’s Response

CHECK THIS OUT!

Erik
- Standard Notes – available as an AppImage and a Snap
- PDF Shuffler – assemble and rearrange pdfs available in the Mint Software Manager
- Grsync – GUI interface for Rsync – available in the Mint Software Manager
Leo
- Cmus (C Music Player)
- Via Londoner – The Commission for the Enrichment of the French Language has recommended the use of “audio à la demande” as a replacement for “podcast”
  - Send hatemail for butchering the French pronunciation to [email protected]!
- Via Londoner – bootiso – A CLI tool to make bootable flash drives for Linux and Windows.
Moss
- UbuntuShop: New home of ManjaroBook AMD Ryzen, also have a MintBook and others: NOT a Canonical company
- New Beginners’ Guide to using Nano – It’s FOSS
- FreeFileSync
Joe:
Tony H
- This is an alternative to Zoom. Jitsi Meet is a fully encrypted video conferencing web based application

Parted Magic – is a live Linux disc partitioning and secure wiping OS, Although it is Open source since late 2013 they moved to a paid model to support its development you can buy a unsupported iso for $11 and install it as many times as you like, if you want updates for 12 months a subscription will cost you $39 although I’m unclear how many iso’s you can use at once with this purchase

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