Episode 402 Show Notes

Welcome to mintCast

the Podcast by the Linux Mint Community for All Users of Linux

This is Episode 402!

This is Episode 402.5!

Recorded on Sunday the 11th of December, 2022

Driving slow in the fast lane I’m Joe; winding down, I’m Moss; Hey y’all I’m Bill

— Play Standard Intro —

  • First up in the news
  • In security and privacy
    • Eufy shows your videos
    • Samsungs lost some keys
    • and more rootkits
  • Then in our Wanderings we talk a lot
  • In our Innards section Bill discusses setting up podcasts
  • And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

— Play News Transition Bumper —

The News

20 minutes

  • Mint 21.1 beta has been released (written by londoner)
  • Includes content from: Linux Mint, OMG Ubuntu, How-To Geek, The Register, 9to5linux.com
  • As has been the case since 2014, Mint releases are based on the LTS versions of its upstream parent Ubuntu. Since Mint 17, the project stopped building versions based on Ubuntu’s short-term releases. So Mint 21.1 is still based on the current Ubuntu LTS: that’s now 22.04.1 supported until 2027. This isn’t a big change, so you shouldn’t expect it to be majorly different from version 21.
  • Linux Mint 21 was a significant update, with an Ubuntu 22.04 core platform and major changes to all the desktop environment options. Linux Mint 21.1, nicknamed “Vera,” is a smaller-scale upgrade based on the same 22.04 release of Ubuntu.
  • At the heart of Linux Mint 21.1 is Cinnamon 5.6. This is the latest stable release of the nimble (and rather traditional) Cinnamon desktop environment. It offers a few new features, including the new Corner Bar applet. Corner Bar is enabled by default (with the Modern panel layout only but not with the Traditional panel layout), and lets you click the end of the panel to instantly hide all windows and show the desktop. There is a Corner Bar setting to enable a ‘peek at desktop on hover’ effect. This is something many Windows users may be familiar with as it is similar to the desktop button in the Windows 7 and Windows 10 taskbar. Mint adds an option to blur foreground windows too, and configure the opacity of the peek effect itself.
  • Because the new ‘Corner Bar’ in Linux Mint 21.1 offers similar functionality to Linux Mint’s older ‘show desktop’ applet, the latter has been removed (again for the Modern panel layout only). This results in minor rearrangement of the default panel layout. The Mint Menu remains on the far-left but is now followed by a separator, and then shortcuts for Nemo and Firefox. Being in the corner, it’s easier to hit. Unlike in Windows, it can be customized with a right-click, and you can drop files onto it to place them directly onto the desktop.
  • You might also notice that there are no longer icons for “Home” or “Trash” on the desktop. These are now hidden from view, giving the default desktop a minimal, modern feel. Miss them? You can re-enable them from the Desktop Icons settings.
  • New settings lets you control how long notifications appear on screen for (which is great if you find yourself regularly missing notifications, or not having enough time to read lengthy ones.
  • Linux Mint 21.1 introduces new, more colorful folder icons, which are most noticeable when opening the Nemo file manager for the first time and no longer highlights files’ icons when they’re selected, only their names. I’m not sure what the blue diagonal line on the folder corners is meant to represent (if anything), as it does look more like a status-signifier than a part of the folder concept.
  • This isn’t the only major appearance change. Linux Mint 21.1 now uses ‘aqua’ as its default colour accent, rather than the (rather iconic) green synonymous with the distro. Mint explain: “We don’t need to look green to be Linux Mint. We’re Linux Mint no matter what and we want to use the color that looks the most sexy out of the box.”
  • There’s a more vibrant set of accent colors to choose from in the appearance settings; a new mouse cursor theme with a wider selection of additional mouse themes; and now ships with the Yaru, Papirus, Breeze, and Numix icon themes pre-installed (though the new Mint-Y theme remains the default icon set – the previous Mint 21 version of Mint-Y is now called Mint-Y-Legacy ). The default colors have also been updated to be more vibrant, and the folder icons are now yellow (I would say manilla) instead of green.
  • The “throbber” icon (equivalent to the hourglass in Windows) is now multi-colored, and when you change the size of a window, you get different colored icons where previously you just had arrows.
  • Most of the other changes apply to all editions. The MATE version comes with version 1.26.2, and the Xfce edition with Xfce 4.16.4. All three have updated icon and mouse pointer themes, with new, brighter, yellow folder icons, and stylish mouse pointers with no tail. There are new system sounds adapted from Google’s Material Design resources.
  • Elsewhere, Linux Mint 21 gives its Driver Manager and Software Sources tools some new capabilities, including the ability to run Driver Manager in user mode (i.e., without needing a sudo/root password), and work offline. The Software Manager has a dedicated screen for managing authentication keys for external repositories, as well as the old tab of troubleshooting and repair tools. The Software Manager UI has been refined to make it more obvious when software is Flatpak or a system package.
  • Flatpak updates are now installed alongside other updates in the Update Manager, and the update also intros a new graphical ISO verification tool accessed by right-clicking on an ISO image in Nemo.
  • Neofetch is now installed by default
  • If you plan on trying it out do keep in mind it is a beta release. It’s not stable. You should expect to encounter bugs, breakages, rough edges, performance hiccups, and similar. Most folks are better off waiting for the stable Linux Mint 21.1 release in a few weeks time, hopefully before Christmas.
  • Vivaldi adds Mastodon plugin [Moss]
    • Mastodon servers talk to one another via a technology called ActivityPub, an open standard formed as part of the Social Web Networking Group of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). Together all Mastodon servers (and any other software that speaks ActivityPub) form a collective social media network often affectionately called, “The Fediverse“.
    • Vivaldi Social (our instance) is in a fairly unique position here in that it is backed by a small company but one with enough capacity that it should be able to handle a quite a few users. We also run it with the rest of our servers in Iceland and thus have strong user centric, privacy protections backed by law.
    • Furthermore, because we are founded by people who have long supported open protocols for internet communications, and often pushed back against the misuse of larger technology providers, it just felt very natural for us to offer such a service. We are also able to make onboarding to our instance really simple for our current users, since they can make use of the login they likely already setup for Vivaldi browser sync, our forums, or our blogging platform. If you use one of these you can just login with your regular credentials and an account will be created on the fly. Vivaldi Social is also open for signups from anyone else who needs a provider. Join in here: https://social.vivaldi.net
    • And Vivaldi announced on December 7th that they are integrating Vivaldi Social into the sidebar of the desktop browser, becoming the first browser to offer this functionality.
    • The new version – Vivaldi 5.6 – also allows you to pin your tab stacks. We’ve added a new private search engine You.com for select countries, helping to broaden your choices for searching the web.
  • Elementary Updates Bill
    • You can now set files to single-click open in the File Manager
    • They recently fixed an issue on their Flatpak remote that was preventing delta updates from being generated, so expect future Flatpak updates to be much smaller file sizes. For developers wanting to try the new Icon Browser they also fixed a reported crash on startup.
    • Those of you following along with the OS 7 Project Board may have noticed a few new items on the board. Thanks to the folks in Early Access reporting issues we’ve found a few more things that need fixing to make a great release. Recently there have been several improvements merged into the Installer and Initial Setup for a much smoother first run experience including a fix that made the installer window too large for virtual machines booting in legacy mode. We’re continuing to dial things in based on your feedback to make OS 7 something we can be really proud of. Hang tight friends, the bow is going on this one very soon!
  • NixOS 22.11 Released Bill
    • …mostly bugfixes and updates, but new password hatching and aarch64-linux channel merge. The separate aarch64-linux specific channels have been discontinued. Their jobs have been merged into the generic nixos-22.11 and nixos-22.11-small channels and will thereby receive updates at the same time as their x86_64-linux counterparts.

— Play Security Transition Bumper —

Security and Privacy

10 minutes

  • Eufy’s “local storage” cameras can be streamed from anywhere, unencrypted Joe
    • Arstechnica
    • Eufy has issued a statement in response to findings from The Verge and a security researcher:
    • “eufy Security adamantly disagrees with the accusations levied against the company concerning the security of our products. However, we understand that the recent events may have caused concern for some users. We frequently review and test our security features and encourage feedback from the broader security industry to ensure we address all credible security vulnerabilities. If a credible vulnerability is identified, we take the necessary actions to correct it. In addition, we comply with all appropriate regulatory bodies in the markets where our products are sold. Finally, we encourage users to contact our dedicated customer support team with questions.”
    • (The original story follows.)
    • When security researchers found that Eufy’s supposedly cloud-free cameras were uploading thumbnails with facial data to cloud servers, Eufy’s response was that it was a misunderstanding, a failure to disclose an aspect of its mobile notification system to customers.
    • It seems there’s more understanding now, and it’s not good.
    • Eufy didn’t respond to other claims from security researcher Paul Moore and others, including that one could stream the feed from a Eufy camera in VLC Media Player, if you had the right URL. Last night, The Verge, working with the security researcher “wasabi” who first tweeted the problem, confirmed it could access Eufy camera streams, encryption-free, through a Eufy server URL.
  • Samsung’s Android AppSigning Key has leaked – Bill
    • ArsTechnica
    • Łukasz Siewierski, a member of Google’s Android Security Team, has a post on the Android Partner Vulnerability Initiative (AVPI) issue tracker detailing leaked platform certificate keys that are actively being used to sign malware. The post is just a list of the keys, but running each one through APKMirror or Google’s VirusTotal site will put names to some of the compromised keys: Samsung, LG, and Mediatek are the heavy hitters on the list of leaked keys, along with some smaller OEMs like Revoview and Szroco, which makes Walmart’s Onn tablets.
    • These companies somehow had their signing keys leaked to outsiders, and now you can’t trust that apps that claim to be from these companies are really from them. To make matters worse, the “platform certificate keys” that they lost have some serious permissions. To quote the AVPI post:
    • “A platform certificate is the application signing certificate used to sign the “android” application on the system image. The “android” application runs with a highly privileged user id—android.uid.system—and holds system permissions, including permissions to access user data. Any other application signed with the same certificate can declare that it wants to run with the same user id, giving it the same level of access to the Android operating system.”
  • CosmicStrand: the discovery of a sophisticated UEFI firmware rootkit [Moss]
    • SecureList.com
    • “In this report, we present a UEFI firmware rootkit that we called CosmicStrand and attribute to an unknown Chinese-speaking threat actor. One of our industry partners, Qihoo360, published a blog post about an early variant of this malware family in 2017.”
    • “Although we were unable to discover how the victim machines were infected initially, an analysis of their hardware sheds light on the devices that CosmicStrand can infect. The rootkit is located in the firmware images of Gigabyte or ASUS motherboards, and we noticed that all these images are related to designs using the H81 chipset. This suggests that a common vulnerability may exist that allowed the attackers to inject their rootkit into the firmware’s image.”
    • “In these firmware images, modifications have been introduced into the CSMCORE DXE driver, whose entry point has been patched to redirect to code added in the .reloc section. This code, executed during system startup, triggers a long execution chain which results in the download and deployment of a malicious component inside Windows.”
    • “Looking at the various firmware images we were able to obtain, we assess that the modifications may have been performed with an automated patcher. If so, it would follow that the attackers had prior access to the victim’s computer in order to extract, modify and overwrite the motherboard’s firmware. This could be achieved through a precursor malware implant already deployed on the computer or physical access (i.e., an evil maid attack scenario). Qihoo’s initial report indicates that a buyer might have received a backdoored motherboard after placing an order at a second-hand reseller. We were unable to confirm this information.”
    • The goal of this execution chain is to deploy a kernel-level implant into a Windows system every time it boots, starting from an infected UEFI component. UEFI malware authors face a unique technical challenge: their implant starts running so early in the boot process that the operating system (in this case Windows) is not even loaded in memory yet – and by the time it is, the UEFI execution context will have terminated.
    • The workflow consists in setting hooks in succession, allowing the malicious code to persist until after the OS has started up. The steps involved are:
  • The initial infected firmware bootstraps the whole chain.
  • The malware sets up a malicious hook in the boot manager, allowing it to modify Windows’ kernel loader before it is executed.
  • By tampering with the OS loader, the attackers are able to set up another hook in a function of the Windows kernel.
  • When that function is later called during the normal start-up procedure of the OS, the malware takes control of the execution flow one last time.
  • It deploys a shellcode in memory and contacts the C2 server to retrieve the actual malicious payload to run on the victim’s machine.
  • Apparently all this has been found to work on major brands of motherboards, but so far only during Windows loading.

— Play Wanderings Transition Bumper —

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

30 minutes (~5-8 mins each)

  • Joe
    • Well I have been trying some different on the 3d design front. Using the previously printed articulated arms/stands that I built I decided to 3d design and print a USB lamp using some USB powered LEDs. I had been looking at some of them online for near some of my chairs but I decided to make my own instead. I like the design that I came up with and how well it fits together but I think I am going to order some different USB extenders and reprint the base so that the device sits a little bit more level. I do like the end product though and as a proof of concept it is great. I also think that I could improve the mount that I built and I have a couple of other style led lights that I would like to turn into other style of lights.
    • I also found a bankers lamp on thingiverse that can be connected to Alexa using LED strips and an ESP8266 with wifi built in. You can get those fairly cost effectively along with the other parts. After I do that one I would like to see how I can modify to make different utility lamps and see what I find useful
    • I also got GTA VC working on Linux again through steam with proton on the onegx. I had tried several fixes in order to get around the screen resolution issue that it developed. I tried adding the 640×480 resolution manually and I tried forcing windowed mode for the game. Dug through many forums trying to find the solution and burned the midnight oil a couple of times and in the end the solution turned out to be a simple one. Force use an older version of ProtonDB and it worked just fine. Some times the simple solutions are the correct ones. Now I kinda want to get a Nintendo switch so I can play the remastered version.
    • Other then that work has taken up a lot of my time. My new manager is not yet familiar with all the ins and outs of the technology and the people involved so I am taking up a lot of the slack. That will probably change with time but I am also looking for other positions within the company. Not that I am unhappy with my current role but I have been doing the same thing for a very long and I am not sure that there is any upward movement for me in my current role.
    • Haven’t really done a lot of 3D printing and a couple of my headphones are starting to age out. Not much I can do about a blown driver on in ear drivers. So I am going through the process of looking for another set that I can convert at reasonable costs. The cost of used and broken headphones is still pretty high right now though. Needs to be low cost, broken is fine, but also needs to sound good. I like the 1More Triple drivers and they have lasted a good long while after I converted them but the price for broken ones have creeped up too high.
    • I am also heading back to the office on a regular basis again so I am wondering if I want to put some tech in my car to make things more fun. Nothing distracting just convenient. I have always played around with the idea of making my own head unit using either a pi or an old tablet and an amplifier. Maybe also an odb2 scanner to go along with it.
  • Moss
    • I’ve had a few minor issues with my car, I have all but one of them fixed and the fix is in the mail for that one. My wife’s car needs its front brakes checked. I’ve been working some as a substitute teacher, but there will soon be a hiatus until after the new year.
    • I’m currently running tests on Q4OS 4.10, OpenMandriva Lx 4.3, and BigLinux. I also tried to go back to Arco but picked the wrong letter. I am probably reviewing Q4OS this episode of Distrohoppers’, to be recorded the 3rd of January if all goes according to plan.
    • My performance at Chambanacon went very well and I even sold some CDs.
    • No luck on the house hunt at present, but we have narrowed our area of focus yet again, hoping to stay in the Smokies.
    • I opened my T540p the other day, to find that the system had reversed my disks. What was sda was now sdb and vice versa. Opening Mint instead opened Q4OS; opening Q4OS also opened Q4OS. Bodhi was on sda4, but since it was now reported as being on sdb4, and there WAS NO sdb4, it wouldn’t open at all. I was afraid that I would have to completely rework everything, but fortunately reinstalling Mint fixed it.
      • Bill
        • So the last two weeks I’ve been working on getting things set up for a new show featuring Norbert, Leo, and myself called “Linux OTC” This new show will be an “off the cuff” conversational podcast where we will deep dive on a topic that is piquing our interest. The format will be unscripted, and episodes will last no longer than one hour. Everyone can go check out the work in progress that is our website: https://linuxotc.org. We’re all really excited about the new show, and can’t wait to see what we get into.
        • I’ve also decided to migrate the mintcast.org webserver onto a raspberry pi 400 here on my LAN so as to increase the reliability of the site. Shortly after I started on the show we lost our free hosting on the provider we had been working with for some time so we migrated the site to a VPS server on Linode. This decision rendered mixed results. I’m sure when done correctly with a properly powered VPS, Linode is a perfectly good option for someone to host their website on. I chose to go the basic $5 route which gets you a single “shared” core CPU, about 25 gigs of storage and 1 Gig of RAM. I’m just not sure that is enough to properly power a website like ours. I would occasionally get “database connection errors.” So it was at that point I decided to migrate our site to the Raspberry Pi 400 running here next to me. I’ve got all the speed needed to support the site, as well as the business class static IP address necessary to properly route a webserver. The pi400 is actually an impressive device – considerably more powerful than the “nanode” that was running the show before. But most of all it will cost next to nothing to run it. Where Linode was charging $5 a month the host the VPS, it shouldn’t cost that much to run a pi all year. Although the server on Linode is powered off – I’m going to wait a while before I delete it just to be sure we don’t have any unforeseen problems. I want to make it clear that although I ultimately decided to go a more “self-hosted” route, I am happy with the service Linode offers. They don’t sponsor the show, but if and when we ever do get the infrastructure set up to accept sponsorship, they will be the of the first companies we will be contacting. Linode is an “all Linux” company, and we all know how much that resonates.
        • So it would seem as though we’ve somewhat successfully migrated our document management to our Nextcloud. Having a bespoke document server for our collaboration turned out to be key into getting the whole thing up and running. Once I did that, it all seemed to start falling into place. We’ve still got some transitional pains to work through, but I haven’t seen anyone get mad, and start throwing things, so perhaps it ain’t so bad. One concern I do have is with regards to performance. When we used Nextcloud office on the last show, Norbert was having some lag issues, and I had some connection reset problems where every so often the page would reload and go all the way to the top – not good when you’re reading for the show. My work around is to open the file locally with Libreoffice and read from there. I have the Nextcloud desktop client running on this machine so get a backup stored locally of all documents on the server. This work around won’t work for everyone though because I’m not sure if I’ll be able to read the show notes without it moving around and getting covered up by Moss’s editing while I’m reading. I’m afraid I’ve gotten to where I can’t read text unless it’s either moving or getting covered up by Moss’s user tag attached to his cursor. The struggle is real, but I will persevere. [Moss = :P]

— Play Innards Transition Bumper —

Linux Innards

30 minutes (~5-8 minutes each)

  • Setting Up A Podcast
    • So setting up podcasts has become something of a secondary past time for me. As I described in my wanderings – I am currently in the middle of setting up what will be a third podcast for me. There’s a lot of things to do if you want to set up a show and make it available on as many platforms as possible, so we decided this would be a cool topic to get into as our innards.
    • I will describe here to mechanically different ways to set up a podcast. In both examples I will be describing a show that will be on YouTube as well as being offered as an “audio only” version.
    • mintCast it’s self is a good example of a show that is both YouTube-centric as well as podcast-centric. Similar to my other shows with a couple differences. I’ll start by describing the set up for a show like mintCast.
    • MintCast is an old, venerable Linux podcast. The show was set up when an organization like ours could get a free Google workspace account with several user accounts associated with it. For example: the show’s email [email protected] has several user accounts attached like mine for example [email protected]. If you tried to set up something like this today I think it would cost $6 per user, including the parent account [email protected]. We are able to associate our email to that domain because we pay a small monthly fee to Namecheap to secure that domain. Since we’re technically grandfathered in with our Google account, we pay nothing for our Google workspace account. My other show 3 Fat Truckers for example is charged a $6 a month fee to have [email protected] as our email address. This is in addition to the fee we pay to have the https://3ftpodcast.org domain. If I had this to do over again I’d not choose to use the domain for email. I would instead opt for a free email account like [email protected] or [email protected]. This is because I didn’t take into account the difference between a tech podcast audience and a comparatively more blue-collar audience like we have with 3ft. Almost nobody emails 3ft. So set up a google account for the YouTube, get an email address, and set up a domain for the show.
    • So once you’ve got a domain, email, and YouTube account. A good next step is to set up an account on a podcast provider. This is where mintCast differs from my other shows. mintCast uses Archive.org to host the audio files and then uses a WordPress plugin like PowerPress to generate an RSS feed which updates listener’s podcast players with the latest episodes. This is an effective, free of cost way of setting up your show, but has the downside of not giving you access to metrics relevant to your show. It’s for this reason I chose to use a podcast provider for my other shows. For my part, I chose RedCircle to host my shows. It is free of charge to set up an account and host one show per account, and it gives you access to information like where you’re show is downloaded from, what platforms are used as well as what devices are used. RedCircle also handles RSS generation, as well as forwarding to platforms such as Spotify, iHeart Radio, Google, Apple and more. Apple being a slightly more interesting situation being that its catalog is what is scraped for metadata by other players – so make absolutely sure your show is listed on Apple podcasts. You may have to make a quick placeholder episode and upload it to RedCircle so as to generate the RSS feed to forward to the platforms.
    • One step I did which I suppose isn’t necessarily required is to add my show to podcastindex.org which is an alternative podcast repository if you will to Apple, whose stated goal is to extend the podcast ecosystem beyond Apple. We in the open source world just love talk like that so there you go. As I said – you need a working RSS feed to connect these sites to.
    • So you’ve got a YouTube page, a domain, an email address. You’ve set up a podcasting provider, and linked the RSS feed to you’re show. Now it’s time to get a little creative…well it’s time to learn some WordPress-fu. While it’s not strictly necessary, all good podcasts have their own website. That way when viewers/listeners want to interact with you directly, or have a central place to find where and how to watch and listen to your show. In my case, I did the rewarding work of learning how to set up an Apache web server from scratch, how to work with SSL certificates, reverse proxies, cloud services and now I have the chops to build sites in less than an hour – not bragging or anything. So it’s worthwhile to learn how to set it all up, get WordPress installed and running, and set up a site with all the stuff for giving folks access to your show.
    • Once WordPress is installed, and you’ve done the work of getting your domain pointed at it you’ll want to get the right theme to display the elements of your show. I use the “podcast” theme with both of my shows. It is, in fact the theme used on the mintcast.org page. While there’s more modern options out there, this theme in my opinion is well organized and works well for displaying all the relevant information for podcasts. You could in theory make any theme work, “podcast” just lays it out well, right from the git go. Do some playing with the available options, find the workflow that works best for you. There are some plugins I recommend: Jetpack – which gives you some tools for monitoring the security and reliability of the site, W3 Total Cache – which is a good option for caching your pages whereby increasing performance of pageloads and database management. WPvivid – I can’t stress this one enough – this plugin is vital for backing up your site to a single file that can be used to either roll-back your site, or migrate it to another server. This is how I was able to move mintcast.org from Linode to my own gear relatively easily. Lastly, as I said before – if you’re not opting to use a podcast provider like RedCircle, you’ll need a plugin like PowerPress to generate an RSS feed. The thing about doing it that way is that you will have to add each episode to the feed manually as well as writing out the post for each episode. I actually do a hybrid approach to this method in that I use RedCircle but I still manually fill out the posts for each episode. I do this so that I can embed YouTube videos directly to the post.
    • So now you’ve got you’re infrastructure set up, you’ve set up the google account, got an email address, got YouTube up and running, you’ve done the work of setting up a domain, learned how to set up a website, and pointed your domain at it. You’ve set up a podcast provider, and linked you’re RSS to Apple, and Podcast Index. You’re now ready to start making episodes. You’re going to need some software. If you’re using Linux, you’re sorted. All the tools you need are open source and either available in your software repos, or as a Flatpak. You’ll need (in my opinion, of course) OBS studio for recording video episodes as well as livestreaming. You’ll also need an audio editor such as Audacity for editing the audio files and adding theme music to the feed. Audacity is also good if you want to do discrete recordings of each host. This is useful for shows where each host is in a different recording environment, requiring different levels of editing to create a more coherent sound quality. There’s steps you can take during the recording to provide a reliable method for aligning the tracks temporally. Good podcasting is a learning process and you shouldn’t expect to get it all right from the beginning. Anyone who goes back and watches 3ft from the beginning will bear witness to the process by which we learned to create episodes of good audio and video quality.
    • It’s a good idea to get involved in podcaster communities. Connect and gain ideas from people who have been in the field for a while. As time goes on, you’ll pick up on tiny concepts which will build upon the quality of your content. Keep an eye on new technologies, new software and ideas for providing quality content. Podcasting is an ever changing, always improving world.
    • One detail I forgot to include is that you should try to keep episodes between 45 minutes and an hour. There’s real research out there that seems to indicate listeners begin to drop off at 45 minutes. The reasons are likely due to the times in which people consume podcasts. Be aware – people are likely listening while commuting or doing other things. As with most things, the devil is in the details.
  • Following all of these steps may seem daunting, but as with most things you make a list of things that need to be done, and you work them out one item at a time. Once you fix one problem, you move on to another. I can promise you the reward is worth the effort and sacrifice. If you take nothing else from all of this, remember this: It is most important to be reliable. Be sure listeners can count on the fact that if you say you’re going to put out an episode on a specific day and time you stick to it. Even if it’s a complete phone-in. Make sure you have content when it’s supposed to be there. As corny as it sounds, there’s people out there who will become emotionally dependent on the shows they love. You as the content creator need to take the responsibility you have to the lives of your listeners seriously. Linux podcasters for example need to bear in mind their responsibility as influencers. People listen to these shows and make important decisions about the software they use as well as how they handle online security and “best practices” with the technology they use in every day life as well as at the workplace. Getting it right is a matter of necessity. Take what you do seriously, take you’re time, and the quality will show. I promise.

— Play Vibrations Transition Bumper —

Vibrations from the Ether

20 minutes (~5 minutes each)

  • From “Comments” on episode 399 on the Website: (Bill)
    • Bentley Sorsdahl I loved this show .. I love most of them actually. I was wondering if it would be a good idea if you posted the show notes for the History of Linux each episode?? I know I would like it. Or maybe at least links to the packages mentioned in the show. Like to day links to the different SUSE distros and NAS implementation would be great. Thanks to all for a wonder pod cast I never miss it now that I have fount it! Bentley

— Play Check This Transition Bumper —

Check This Out

10 minutes

Housekeeping & Announcements

  • Thank you for listening to this episode of mintCast!
  • If you see something that you’d like to hear about, tell us!

Send us email at [email protected]

Join us live on Youtube

Post at the mintCast subreddit

Chat with us on Telegram,

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Or post directly at http://192.168.1.167:8181

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 <Thanks, Clem and co!>

— Play Closing Music and Standard Outro —

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