Welcome to mintCast

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

This is Episode 441!

This is Episode 441.5!

Recorded on Sunday, July 7, 2024.

Trying to stay cool I’m Joe; enjoying my stay in the tropics, I’m Moss; Soldiering on, I’m Bill; Labouring away I’m Majid

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Full show notes are linked in the show’s description
First up in the news: Mint 22 Beta Released, Mint Monthly News – June, Firefox has a Weather tab, Seattle computer collection is being auctioned, Proton adds Docs to Proton Drive, Linux runs on Google Drive,
In security and privacy: KDE Plasma Flaw Opens Door to Unauthorized System Access
Then in our Wanderings: Majid has Schadenfreude, Bill opens up about OnlyOffice, Joe has fun with his 3D printer, Moss makes a mess of things;

In our Innards section: It’s all about the NAS
And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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The News

20 minutes

Linux Mint 22 Betas Released Moss
- By Joey Sneddon from OMG Ubuntu (via londoner)
- The beta versions of Linux Mint 22 “Wilma” have arrived ahead of an anticipated stable release in late July/early August (depending on how many bugs, issues, and quirks are found and fixed during the formal beta testing period).
- Linux Mint 22 is a sizable update. It’s the first version to be based on top of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and inherits all of the foundational goodies that release provides. It includes the Linux 6.8 kernel, new graphics drivers, and PipeWire as the default sound server.
- But Linux Mint adds plenty of its own ‘spice’ on top of this Ubuntu base, including a new version of the Cinnamon desktop environment, a suite of core apps, a Flatpak-friendly software store, and a myriad of other substantive changes.
- Let’s start with the new features in Cinnamon 6.2 as this is the default desktop of Linux Mint 22 (though MATE and Xfce versions are also available, for those who’d prefer them):
  - Search bar shows by default when adding to Startup Applications
  - New screen lock delay options: 5 & 10 seconds
  - Workspace Switcher supports removing workspace with middle click
  - Cinnamon Spices now support configurable keybindings
  - Keybindings now searchable (in keyboard shortcuts editor)
  - User applet supports showing user profile pic on panel
  - Cinnamon sessions now have greeter badges
  - Mint Menu gains a ‘Science’ category
  - Cornerbar applet makes click actions configurable
  - OSK picks up a button to dismiss the OSK
  - Active VPN connections append padlock to network icons
- Many of the default apps in Linux Mint 22 gain new features and/or improvements:
  - Nemo gains a new layout editor, and submenus for actions
  - Matrix web app (Element) added to default install
  - Software Manager hides unverified Flathub apps by default
  - Warpinator now has a ‘restart’ item in the menu
  - Pix now supports JXL images
  - Sticky notes lets you set default screen position
  - Time Shift backup now shows confirmation dialog on delete
  - Xed text editor gains keyboard shortcut to toggle minimap
  - Redshift removed (due to Mozilla location service deprecation)
- Additionally, Thunderbird remains packaged as a DEB package, albeit by the Linux Mint team. Ubuntu has switched to a Thunderbird snap, and made the Thunderbird DEB in the repos a transition package which (re)installs the snap build.
- Web apps made using Linux Mint’s Web App Manager continue to use Firefox (as before) but the toolbar and menu bar is now hidden by default (but will reappear as/if/when needed, such as opening a link in a web app in a new tab).
- Many of the apps in Linux Mint 22 have been downgraded to older, GTK3 versions. This is due to newer builds adopting libadwaita, which Linux Mint isn’t enamoured with as it affects integration with the Linux Mint desktop experience.
- Among apps downgraded to older versions (than what are in the noble repos): Celluloid, GNOME Calculator, Simple Scan, Disk Usage Analyser, System Monitor, GNOME Calendar, and File Roller.
- More general changes in Linux Mint 22 include:
  - Guest sessions disabled by default
  - PipeWire is now the default sound server
  - Less disk space used for translations
  - Default touchpad driver is now libinput
  - Selection of new desktop backgrounds
  - Shutdown timeout is reduced to 10 seconds
  - Slick Greeter supports cursor scaling for HiDPI displays
  - Standalone GNOME Online Accounts app
- Also a bunch of lower-level bug fixes, stability improvements, and performance tweaks are (as you’d expect) included as part of this update. But those ‘invisible changes’ aside, the list above covers the user-facing new features in Linux Mint 22.
- You can download Linux Mint 22 beta from one of the official mirrors linked to in the release announcement. Be sure to read the release notes and keep in mind that this release is intended for testing purposes, may contain bugs, etc.
- Those testing should report bugs with Linux Mint 22 on the dedicated Github page (but do not file bugs related to Wayland there).
- No-one is advised to make a beta release their default OS, but many do. Anyone using the beta will be able to “upgrade” to the final, stable Linux Mint 22 release by installing updates. Similarly, once the final release arrives it will be possible to upgrade to Linux Mint 22 from 21.3.
- The final release of Linux Mint 22 will be supported with security updates until 2029, and work on the next major version, Linux Mint 23, won’t take place until 2026. Linux Mint 22.1, 22.2, and 22.3 will also be based on Ubuntu 2404 LTS.
Mint Monthly News – June 2024
- From the Linux Mint blog (via londoner)
- The Mint Monthly News for June was posted earlier today (July 7). It was very brief because the BETA is taking all the time of the development team.
- Linux Mint 22 looks like a solid base for the future, but there are many bugs in this BETA. 109 bug reports have been received so far, 53 are still open. Some of the issues are important (apparmor security changes leading to application crashes, HW acceleration playback libs making Xorg crash, Flatpak/mintinstall issues…etc.) so the team is really happy to get this feedback before the stable release. They are fixing the bugs bit by bit and sending updates as they go along. It’s exciting, the release gets better every day, but it takes time.
- It’s hard to give a precise ETA for the Stable release. The release is expected this month, but this BETA phase will take longer than the traditional 2 weeks.
Firefox’s New Weather Tab – Majid
- from OMGUbuntu, Joey Sneddon
- Mozilla has big plans for its browser, and among a few new features expected to rain down on us this year is greater personalisation of the new tab page.
- The ability to set a new tab background image is certain to be be the most eye-catching (and most long awaited) customisation change. But a series of smaller, more practical tweaks are in the works too, like being able to see weather info on the new tab page.
- Obviously visiting a dedicated weather website is a proactive way to find out the latest forecast info and temperature.
- But having at-a-glance conditions visible each time you open a new tab in Firefox (a page I see more times in the course of a day than anything else) is zero-effort. The information comes to you.
- Now, the new tab weather widget in Firefox isn’t yet ready for the masses, so you won’t find a settings toggle for it surfaced in the core UI.
- But if you want to try it out early, you can — you don’t need to install a beta build.
- In the latest Mozilla Firefox 127 release simply do the following:
  - Go to about:config in a new tab
  - ‘Accept Risk and Continue’
  - Search for browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.system.showWeather
  - Double-click the result to enable the feature
- Now, when you open a new tab you’ll see a current condition and temperature nestled in the upper-right corner of the (otherwise largely empty) New Tab page:
- You can choose to see a ‘simplified’ or ‘detailed’ (but not that detailed, mind) layout, and switch between Celsius or Fahrenheit as your preferred temperature unit:
- As the widget strap-line notes, Accuweather is being used as meteorological backend for this feature. Clicking the widget opens the Accuweather website in a new tab with more detailed information on the locale.
- As this feature is neither enabled by default nor exposed in the settings panel, you shouldn’t expect much of it: it’s a work-in-progress, it may error out, might not work in all locales, and so on.
- The widget fetches weather info for the autodetected location. This location may be imprecise or flat-out of wrong (especially if you use a VPN, a mobile tether, etc). Right now, Firefox doesn’t let you manually search for and set a weather locale, but that feature is coming.
- After enabling this weather widget you can easily disable it: click the ‘cog’ icon on the new tab page and slide the ‘show weather’ toggle to the off position.
- Caveats aside, as a forecast of what’s to come, Firefox’s new tab weather widget appears to be a well-considered addition. It’s minimally designed, non-distracting, and adds a lick more utility to the ‘starting page’ – somewhat needed since given other browsers are ramping up theirs.
Seattle’s Living Computers Museum logs off for good as Paul Allen estate will auction vintage items Moss
- from GeekWire
- Living Computers Museum + Labs, the Seattle institution created by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen as a hands-on showcase for rare computing technology and interactive displays, will not reopen, more than four years after closing near the start of the pandemic.
- Allen’s estate, which has been managing and winding down his vast array of holdings since his death in 2018, confirmed to GeekWire that the 12-year-old museum is closed for good. The museum website and social media accounts were taken down Tuesday.
- The estate also announced Tuesday that some key pieces from Allen’s personal collection of computer artifacts, displayed over the years at Living Computers, will be auctioned by Christie’s as part of a broader sale of various Allen items later this year.
- The estate says, in keeping with Allen’s wishes, proceeds from the sale of any items will go to charitable causes. Allen’s sister Jody Allen is the executor of his estate and for several years has been selling pieces of it, ranging from Seattle’s Cinerama movie theater, the Everett, Wash.-based Flying Heritage and Combat Armor Museum, Vulcan Productions, Stratolaunch, the superyacht Octopus, and more.
- The estate previously teamed up with Christie’s for a November 2022 auction of 155 masterpieces from Allen’s extensive art collection. It was the world’s most successful single-owner fine art auction ever, raising a record $1.62 billion.
- The new auction, titled “Gen One: Innovations from the Paul G. Allen Collection,” is billed as “a celebration of first-generation technologies and the pioneering minds behind them.”
- The event will feature more than 150 items in three separate auctions, including “Firsts: The History of Computing,” an online sale closing Sept. 12. This auction pays homage to Allen’s role shaping the modern computing landscape. A highlight of the sale is a computer that Allen helped restore and on which he worked, a DEC PDP-10: KI-10. Built in 1971, it’s the first computer that both Allen and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates ever used prior to founding Microsoft. It’s estimated to fetch $30,000 to $50,000.
- Christie’s said details about other computers and related items from Allen’s collection will be shared this summer.
Proton launches its own version of Google Docs – Majid
- from Engadget
- Proton now has its own version of Google Docs in its Drive cloud storage service, and like the company’s other products, it comes with end-to-end encryption. The company says its flavor of Docs “offers a unique solution in a market where most popular products neglect privacy” and recommends it for use in the healthcare, media, finance and legal industries. Proton Docs has advanced formatting and image embed options like Google Docs has and can create, open and edit documents in multiple formats, including Microsoft .docx.
- It has collaboration tools similar to Google Docs’, as well. Users can invite anyone to view and edit their documents, though those without a Proton account will be prompted to create one first. The free tier of Proton Drive includes essential document features so people don’t have to pay for the service if they don’t want to. Participants will be able to add comments to the document, reply to them and resolve them. And users will see other participants’ presence and their cursor placements in real time, so that they know who’s working on which part of the document and so that their edits don’t clash.
- Proton didn’t say whether the launch of Docs means it’s going to roll out analogues of Google’s other Workspace apps in the future, but the company did expand its offerings with several different products over the last few years. In addition to Drive cloud storage — and, of course, its email service — the company has a VPN, an encrypted calendar and even a password manager. Docs will make its way to Proton users over the coming days.
- More information is available at the Proton blog.
Linux Distro Can Run on Google Drive: This Developer Made It Happen
- from It’s Foss
- The brainchild of Ersei, a student of Purdue University, published a detailed blog on how they were able to accomplish this seemingly ethereal task, that was driven by one of their vices, “competitiveness”.
- They wanted to create that was something harder, better, faster, and, of course, stronger than what their friend achieved. Ersei began with an idea, which then spiraled into various stages of creative thinking (they mention it as being on the brink of insanity).
- But, they finally went with running Linux on Google Drive. They started by taking the help of Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE), that allows non-privileged users to create file systems without the need to edit the kernel code.
- Thereafter, they got FUSE programs installed in the Linux kernel’s initramfs, while enabling networking (Dracut helped with those), and chose Arch Linux to build on top of, testing it on a local S3 bucket.
- Then, they moved to implement an existing project that allows for running FUSE with Google Drive into their Arch Linux build, made many fixes along the way, and mounted the drive.
- After many rsync runs, a successful pairing of Linux and Google Drive was achieved.
- Of course, everything was not all fine and dandy, Ersei noted:
  - Extremely slow boot times.
  - Relative symlinks not working.
  - Hard links were non-functional.
  - Permissions and attributes don’t appear to work.
  - Symbolic links to other Symbolic links didn’t work.
  - Calling for Symlinks outside of Google Drive doesn’t work.
- But, that didn’t demotivate Ersei, they went on to fix the slow boot times with a few tweaks. They even tested their Frankenstein creation on a spare laptop they had lying around that didn’t have any storage. It worked just fine on it.
- Even though they admit that this is a silly project, they are open to the idea of commercializing this for any interested company, offering up the promise of “True Cloud Native Computing”.
- Interested in trying this out? If your answer is yes, Ersei’s blog is a must-read if you want to get your bearings on how to run Linux on Google Drive.
- If you have any further questions, then you can contact them by heading to their homepage, where they have linked their socials.

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Security and Privacy

10 minutes

KDE Plasma Flaw Opens Door to Unauthorized System Access
- From Cybersecurity News (via londoner)
- The KDE development team has issued a critical security advisory warning users of a high-severity vulnerability (CVE-2024-36041) affecting the KSmserver component in the Plasma desktop environment. This flaw could allow unauthorized users on the same machine to gain access to the session manager, potentially enabling them to execute arbitrary code upon the next boot.
- Technical Breakdown of the Vulnerability: The vulnerability lies in the way KSmserver, KDE’s XSMP manager, handles connections via ICE. It incorrectly permits connections based solely on the host, granting access to all local connections. This loophole could be exploited by a malicious user on the same system to hijack the session manager and run unauthorized code when the victim user logs back in.
- The KDE development team extends their gratitude to Fabian Vogt for identifying the vulnerability and contributing to the development of the patches.
- Affected Versions and Mitigation: Users of Plasma 6 and Plasma 5 are both vulnerable to this flaw. To address the CVE-2024-36041 flaw, KDE has released updates and patches for both versions:
- Plasma 6: Update to plasma-workspace version 6.0.5.1 or apply the provided patches.
- Plasma 5: Update to plasma-workspace version 5.27.11.1 or apply the provided patches.
- Additionally, ensure that the “iceauth” binary is installed to enforce proper authorization.
- Prioritize Your Security – Update Now: KDE urges all users to update their Plasma installations immediately to protect themselves from potential attacks. This vulnerability is considered high severity, as it could lead to a complete compromise of a user’s system.

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Bi-Weekly Wanderings

30 minutes (~5-8 mins each)

Bill
- So my tinkering this week is marked with mixed results. For some time I’ve been attempting to build out the OnlyOffice server needed to back-end the document management we’ve thus far been using Collabora to satisfy. Some of the hosts have expressed their dislike for the LibreOffice based solution, so I’ve been at effort trying to get the one single alternative up and running. As I’ve described before, Collabora is a single Docker container running to provide the document management capabilities. Getting it up and going is fairly straight forward and has worked as it is intended for a little over a year and a half now as far as I’m aware. The Collabora container is a backend for the “Nextcloud Office” application in Nextcloud. The two things together give you an online cloud document solution similar to Office 365 or Google Docs. The alternative to Collabora is “OnlyOffice” Community Document Server, which is by no means a similar solution to get set up and running. Now, that being said if I was to choose a “one-click option” from Digital Ocean or the like, I would be sorted. I’ve already done the experimental work getting that up and running and it’s nearly trivial to get OnlyOffice working on our Nextcloud connecting to a droplet running the necessary server bits. The problem with that solution is that the droplet is $20 a month which is well over the show’s budget of $0 monthly. The other problem is that I am a consummate self-hoster, and farming out something which I should be able to work out is beyond what I can bring myself to cope with. I find it unfortunate folks find so much friction with Collabora. I’ve found it to be a nice experience once you wrap your head around the fact that it isn’t MS Office or Google Docs. I looked up and watched some tutorials on LibreOffice, and have found the experience usable.
- On to the positive: I’ve installed and have been testing Mint 22 beta, albeit on a virtual machine. I can tell you the experience is quite nice. I’m digging the Pipewire support, and am enjoying some of the little niceties here and there. The one thing of note is the setting to no show “unverified” Flatpaks in the software store. That is a nice touch. That being said, I disabled it. I like how it still lets you know the package is an unverified Flatpak. Interestingly, I had no idea the Audacity Flatpak is in fact “unverified.” This doesn’t necessarily mean the package isn’t safe, it just means it’s completely community-supported. I’ll continue to test the beta and report my experiences accordingly, though I don’t foresee any problems.
Joe
- After the show the other day, I had a meeting but after that I worked on my 3d printer. I had been having problems with extrusion. To the point where the PTFE Tubing was ripping out of the coupler. I first attempted to shorten the PTFE tubing to get rid of the worn parts but the same thing was happening. Then I went on to clean the nozzle to make sure that it was clear. That did not work. Same issue. Tried a cold pull and then just changed out the nozzle and the coupler. Still the same problem. what fixed it was replacing the PTFE tubing with some Capricorn.
- This also meant taking the hot end apart so that I could make sure the whole channel was clear. Which it was not as it looked like there was some of the previous color of filament still inside. Since I had it torn apart this far I got out my dremel and cut a groove across the mounting bolt that was stuck in the hot end and use a flathead screwdriver to remove it and replace it with another.
- Afterwards my prints cleaned right up. I was concerned that the heating element may have gone bad but that looks to not be the case. I have however added a new hotend with the element and the temperature sensor to my Amazon queue for next time I am shopping.
- Previously I have gotten the one that includes the shroud fans but since I am using a 3D-printed Fang cooler and some Noctua fans that is no longer necessary and I will only need to get the block and the heating element and thermistor.
- I have also previously on the show discussed how I have added couplers to the fan connectors which makes swapping them out very easy but the heating element passes through a lot more power so I will need to do some research first.
- Work is kinda taking over my life again. With one person being out the whole month of July I am putting in a lot of extra hours and weekend work to keep the balls juggling. It does make it difficult to keep up with the hobbies.
- We are also going to have a person out for the entire month of November and another person out for most of December.
- I decided to try out my steam deck in docked mode with a mouse and keyboard and started playing some Axton again on BL2. I am having a lot of fun with it. The resolution looks great and I did have to put a USB extender on in order to use my wireless mouse and keyboard to keep the connection, I had zero issues with some in depth play
- I also found an interesting article talking about how Waydroid will eventually be built into Steam OS. I can see where that would be awesome. I have a couple of games that are on android that I would love to play on the deck. Like GTA:VC remastered which is only available for the switch and android. I do already have a version of GTA:VC but the remastered just looks better. Also KOTOR which I have on Android but not the deck. Classic game and awesome.
- In the meantime I have found a script that does the work to install it and I am debating giving it a try since there are some caveats, such as needing to reinstall everytime that Steam OS updates and the script breaking whenever there is a kernel update.
- Jackie got me a Palm portable keyboard made for Palm handhelds. With some research I was able to find a project showing how to add a module to make it Bluetooth. It is a pretty quality looking and feeling foldable keyboard and the project looks interesting.
- The parts for this persons build required the ordering of parts from Ali Express since some of the switches are not available on amazon and the 3d prints are made for that. I mean I could redesign everything and try my own way but the cost is not too bad and all I have to do is wait a couple of weeks for the stuff to arrive.
- I will let you know how it comes out in the end. I think the only other thing that I will have to order is some solid core wire.
Moss
- I goofed. I wanted to install the betas of Mint 22, and thought I did everything correctly, selecting sda4 as my partition to install to. Somehow, and I don’t know how, it installed to sde – which was my main backup. Yes, I lost my entire drive, and it didn’t have the temerity to tell me. I found out because, when I booted, the GRUB handler was on sda1 and it couldn’t find anything on sda4. I could not boot to anything, and no matter what I tried, my Mint 21.3 and Bodhi installations were not findable by anything I tried.
- I reformatted my sde drive and copied everything to it that I had backed up on other drives, losing only about 5% of my files – mostly old podcast files that I was only saving for no particular reason. So I’m ok about that.
- I had to completely reinstall Mint 21.3 and Bodhi 7 AppPack, and a couple days later did the same for the copy of KDE neon User Edition I also had on that drive (which I was trying to replace with Mint 22 Beta). Everything is back to normal on sda2 and sda3, and I just have a few things to log into before sda4 is fully restored.
- Next time I install anything on this machine, I will turn the backup drives off. That is the lesson I learned. As they say, experience is directly proportional to ruined equipment, but I sure wish this hadn’t happened.
- My wife and I are panicking about our situation here in the States due to various political happenings we do not talk about on mintCast. We are considering our options, and in a sense are glad we do not have our own home yet.
- I had a lovely interview with Ken Fallon for HPR. I don’t yet know when it will be an HPR episode, but it’s coming. He even had me sing a number, although it would have been better had I been prepared for it with one of my own songs so I would be 100% certain of its licensing. It was mostly about Full Circle Magazine and Full Circle Weekly News, but of course we got talking about Distrohoppers’ Digest, mintCast, and everything short of the Man in the Moon. I’m toying with the idea of an HPR podcast of a bunch of computer filksongs I know.
- Still reading all the books I’m involved in, 3 of them aloud to my wife and a fourth aloud to my best friend via phone, as well as 6 or 7 by myself.
Majid
- So I’m generally a happy bunny because of the landslide win by the Labour party in our General Election. I’m happy that this bunch of Tory charlatans, drifters and incompetents are out, and maybe we can start trying to fix this country. There’s the usual refrains around “corrupt” politicians I am cautiously optimistic. Lets home goes well.
- So this random wifi conncetion-disconnection on Ubuntu I mentioned before, I decided to distrohop- The desktop is running Aurora immutable and has been working well. I tried therefore to install Silverblue on my laptop. The installer isn’t helpful and it was very intuitive. In the end, remembering the discussion around Zorin last time (and having not used it for about 7 years) I decided to use it. It’s comfortable, easy to use, slightly odd theming, but generally a known quantity. I’m using it GNOME rather then their psuedo-windows layouts.
- I’ve been trying to use and get my head around the new NAS set-up. Still finding my feet in this field, I’m sure we’d get into this in the innards
- Update on the convert, moved loads of stuff onto open source, but still having issues with MS Office. But hes fully invested into Proton. He then did asked a question, “can I run Linux in a VM on my Samsung Galaxy Tab”. Apparently his daughter has managed to do (though I don’t know what/how). I think I need to discuss that first with him, I want to know why he wants to do that.
- I’m annoyed at eBay again. People bid and offer on your items, then 2 seconds after buying suddenly “something comes up” and they have to cancel. So annoying.
- Am very happy that India won the Cricket World Cup as well as Labour winning the election. England at Euro 2024 have not been inspiring, but seem to getting though
- House of the Dragon & The Boys doing well. Started watching repeats of Brooklyn 99

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Linux Innards

30 minutes (~5-8 minutes each)

NAS This could be a huge conversation. There are many things that we could cover from hardware to apps
- Definition
  - What is a NAS According to Wikipedia: Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level (as opposed to block-level storage) computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a heterogeneous group of clients. The term “NAS” can refer to both the technology and systems involved, or a specialized device built for such functionality
  - A NAS device is optimised for serving files either by its hardware, software, or configuration. It is often manufactured as a computer appliance – a purpose-built specialized computer. NAS systems are networked appliances that contain one or more storage drives, often arranged into logical, redundant storage containers or RAID. Network-attached storage typically provide access to files using network file sharing protocols such as NFS, SMB, or AFP. From the mid-1990s, NAS devices began gaining popularity as a convenient method of sharing files among multiple computers, as well as to remove the responsibility of file serving from other servers on the network; by doing so, a NAS can provide faster data access, easier administration, and simpler configuration as opposed to using general-purpose server to serve files
  - The way manufacturers make NAS devices can be classified into three types:
    - Computer-based NAS – using a computer (server level or a personal computer) with processors typically from Intel or AMD, installs FTP/SMB/AFP… software server. The power consumption of this NAS type is the largest, but its functions are the most powerful. Some large NAS manufacturers such as Synology, QNAP systems, and Asus make these types of devices. Max FTP throughput speed varies by computer CPU and amount of RAM.
    - Embedded-system-based NAS – using an ARM- or MIPS-based processor architecture and a real-time operating system (RTOS) or an embedded operating system to run a NAS server. The power consumption of this NAS type is fair, and functions in the NAS can fit most end-user requirements. Marvell, Oxford, and Storlink make chipsets for this type of NAS. Max FTP throughput varies from 20 MB/s to 120 MB/s.
    - ASIC-based NAS – provisioning NAS through the use of a single ASIC chip, using hardware to implement TCP/IP and file system. There is no OS in the chip, as all the performance-related operations are done by hardware acceleration circuits. The power consumption of this type of NAS is low, as functions are limited to only support SMB and FTP. LayerWalker is the only chipset manufacturer for this type of NAS. Max FTP throughput is 40 MB/s.
- Common Uses
  - File storage and sharing
  - Create active data archives or for data backup and disaster recovery
  - Host virtual desktop infrastructure.
  - Test and develop web-based and server-side web applications
  - Stream media files and torrents
  - Store images and videos that require frequent access
  - Create an internal printing repository
- Common applications that are used on NAS that I found other people are using
  - Audio Station
  - Cloud Station
  - Config File Editor (from custom source)
  - Download Station
  - iTunes Server
  - Java Manager
  - Mail Server
  - Media Server
  - Minecraft server (from custom source)
  - Photo Station
  - Plex Media Server
  - Symform Cloud Backup
  - Video Station
  - VPN Server
  - MariaDB
  - Docker
  - Home Assistant
  - Virtual Machine Manager on higher end machines
- DIY vs Prebuilt
  - Examples of how to with each?
- Our experiences with NAS
- NAS vs DAS vs SAN

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Vibrations from the Ether

20 minutes (~5 minutes each)

Purandar Das Hey mintCast team,

I was captivated by your recent episode discussing Mint 22 Beta and the intriguing revelations about light-based chips. The segment where Joe explored fixing things resonated deeply with me and my own journey through tech innovations.

I’d love to propose myself as a guest for an upcoming episode of mintCast. As someone who transitioned from collecting and monetizing personal data to a fierce advocate for data protection, I believe my story would resonate with your tech-savvy audience.

My background includes being a 2x CTO at top marketing services companies and now leading one of the foremost data protection companies. I’ve managed systems that generated 1/2 billion credit card offers annually and sent 30 billion marketing emails.

Are you currently open to featuring guests?

Best,

Purandar Das
- Hey Purandar,

We would love to have you on as a guest for an interview, or perhaps even as a guest host. We will be featuring your email on today’s livestream. If you’re interested please join our Discord server if you haven’t already. We will meet next Saturday at 3 PM US Eastern time for our Bi-weekly Roundtable livestream. We can talk then and there, and make a definite plan for having you on the show. Here’s a link to the Discord invite: https://discord.gg/xjUM9Yht it will expire in 7 days.

Just so you know, Literally everyone in the community is invited to join us for our Roundtable Livestreams. We do them from Discord. I stream them from there directly to YouTube. So you can literally show up everytime if you want!

Anyway, Hope to talk to you soon!

Sincerely,

Bill

mintCast

GGH Hey Bill, I’m a big fan of Mintcast and just wanted to let you know that
I listen to your show every week. I heard you talking about
distro-hopping and using Arch Linux with Cinnamon DE on the show. I also
use Cinnamon on Arch, but I prefer RebornOS over the way you set it up.
RebornOS makes Cinnamon run smoother and has a faster installation
process IMO. The great thing about RebornOS is that you have full
control over what gets installed. You can customize everything from the
DE, WM, software, kernel, etc. It’s always up to date with the latest
features right out of the box, with instant printer and wifi detection.
It’s super easy to use. During the installation process, make sure to
select everything recommended for Cinnamon to get all the icons, fonts,
themes, etc., so it looks and acts like Mint. I’ve tried a lot of
different distros, but I’ve been using Reborn flawlessly for the past 6
months. I initially set it up on a separate drive from my Linux Mint
installation to avoid any issues with daily updates, but I’ve never had
to switch back because Reborn just keeps running smoothly. I highly
recommend giving it a try next time you feel like hopping around. The
installation process is a breeze. Keep up the great work on the show!

A fan of the show and former commercial driver

Hey GGH,

Thanks for reaching out! I admit I hadn’t heard of RebornOS. Part of the reason I wanted to go the Arch route was to install a Cinnamon experience that would show some advanced idea of what Mint would look like in future releases. The other thing is that I literally write update scripts that I have on Github for Arch. I’ve used it nearly exclusively from 2011 all the way until I started on mintCast in 2021. I’ll have to see if anyone from Distrohoppers Digest has tried Reborn. It sounds like an interesting project.

The other thing about Arch is that I have to take it on the road, tethering it to my phone for internet access. I need to be sure it’s not reaching out to the mothership for any reason. Tools such as snapd, and unattended upgrades on the Debian side are really not an option for me. I share your affinity for Cinnamon. I really think it’s the perfect balance of modern, and traditional desktop technology. I have KDE Plasma on another machine, and XFCE on another. I mostly do that to keep up with Desktop development. I’ve considered changing the XFCE machine to Mate given there really isn’t any development on the XFCE side, but I’ve yet to pull the trigger on that one.

Anyway, we’ll feature this email on the Livestream today. So be looking for that! Good to hear from you!

Sincerely,

Bill

mintCast

— Play Check This Transition Bumper —

Check This Out

10 minutes

Arch Linux Can Run on Google Drive: This Developer Made it Happen
- https://news.itsfoss.com/linux-on-google-drive/
FUTO Keyboard
- Modern Keyboard for Android with “on device” voice to text
- Link to Play Store page

Housekeeping & Announcements

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Next Episode – 2 pm US Central time on Sunday, July 21, 2024.
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for 441 Next Roundtable Live Stream – 2 pm US Central time on Saturday, July 13.
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Livestream information is at mintcast.org/livestream

Wrap-up

Joe – Tllts.org, linuxlugcast.com, [email protected], Buy Joe a coffee
Moss – Full Circle Weekly News, [email protected], Mastodon @[email protected], occasionally on HPR
Bill – [email protected], Bill_H on Discord, @[email protected] on Mastodon, also – checkout my other two podcasts Linux OTC and 3 Fat Truckers
Majid – [email protected] @[email protected], AtypicalDr on Instagram and Threads and The Atypical Doctor Podcast on Spotify and also Linux OTC.
Eric – You can hear and see me on the Distrohoppers’ Digest and Linux OTC podcasts as well as the Linux Saloon and LinuxLUGCast streams. I can be reached by email at [email protected].

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

Someone 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!>

— Play Closing Music and Standard Outro —

Episode 441 Show Notes