Welcome to mintCast

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

This is Episode 456!

This is Episode 456.5!

Recorded on Sunday, March 2, 2025.

woke but not awake, I’m Moss; running with scissors im Joe

— Play Standard Intro —

First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – February, Linus Torvalds make Linux Rust-ier, and Mozilla flounders with privacy policy;
In security and privacy:
Then in our Wanderings: Bill is missing, Moss is still catching up, Joe works on his rack, Majid isn’t feeling well, and Eric …;

In our Innards section: We Discuss Linux dedicated hardware
In Bodhi Corner, work has begun on Bodhi Linux 8 with lots of changes under the hood;
And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Please remember if you want to follow along with our discussions, the full show notes for this episode are linked in the show’s description at mintcast.org/show-notes

— Play News Transition Bumper —

The News

20 minutes

Mint Monthly News – February Moss
- From the Mint Blog (via londoner)
- Important Firefox Update
- On March 14, 2025, a root certificate used by Firefox will expire. When this happens, Firefox version 128 (and lower) will suffer significant issues related to:
  - • configuration
  - • add-ons
  - • signed content
  - • DRM-protected media playback
- To avoid these problems, make sure you’re up to date in your Update Manager. Press Refresh and apply all updates. This is important for security reasons, and in this case it’s also important to avoid regressions.
- Firefox 135.0.1 is available on all supported Linux Mint releases. Firefox 135.0.1 was also sent as an emergency update to the following discontinued releases:
  - • Linux Mint 19.3, 19.2, 19.1 and 19
  - • LMDE 5
  - • LMDE 4
- If you are using a discontinued version of Linux Mint (20 or older) or LMDE (5 or older) please upgrade or reinstall Linux Mint.
- For more information on upgrades read https://linuxmint-user-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/upgrade.html.
- Website Maintenance
- The backend for the main Linux Mint website was completely rewritten and containerized. This allowed the Mint team to minimize the interactions between the site and the hosting server, making it easier to upgrade the server and maintain/develop the website on different computers.
- Sometimes a tiny little change is made and everybody loves it. This time it’s the opposite. It took a lot of time to get this done, yet nobody will be able to tell the difference. The URLs were kept unchanged to avoid 404 errors.
- Stripe has been integrated and is now fully supported. Donations made with Stripe are now automatically handled and included in our stats.
- Cinnamon App Menu
- Work started on a redesign of the Cinnamon application menu. This project is led by Joseph in the development team. See the blog post for a screenshot. The changes will be effective with 22.2.
- Desktop and Release Stats
- The latest stats show that, over the past seven days, Mint has been downloaded over 98,000 times. The majority of these were for the Cinnamon version at 44.8%. Next was Xfce at 22.7%, then MATE at 17.3%. LMDE 6 (also Cinnamon) at 9.4% and the last EDGE version at 5.8% completed the list.
- Linux Mint 22.1 represents 70%, followed by LMDE 6 at 14%, Mint 22 at 8% and Mint 21.3, still relevant also at around 8%.
- As previously announced, Linux Mint 22.x will not have an EDGE release. Starting with Linux Mint 22.2, the HWE kernel will be used.
Linus Torvalds Clearly Lays Out Linux Maintainer Roles – Or Not – Around Rust Code Joe
- From Phoronix (via londoner)
- The Linux kernel mailing list drama around the Rust programming language use within the kernel continues… Linus Torvalds has largely refrained from the ongoing LKML discussions around a Rust policy for the Linux kernel and in-fighting between kernel developers and maintainers with differing views over Rust. This evening though Linus Torvalds did decide to chime in on the conversation.
- While there was the commentary a few days ago that Linus Torvalds reportedly said he would merge Rust kernel code over maintainer objections, in responding to Christoph Hellwig he further clarified his position. Hellwig with his DMA maintainer hat on has been against the Rust code with DMA areas of the kernel. Linus Torvalds responded tonight clarifying that maintainers can either choose to take an active role with Rust bindings for areas of the kernel they oversee and become involved or have a hands-off approach where it’s more complementary to their code. But kernel maintainers can’t object to new Rust code as effective “users” of their C code. Linux kernel maintainers can either engage with any proposed Rust code or choose not to and let it live complementary within the kernel, but that they can’t arbitrarily block it as being a user of their code.
- <Quote from Linus> “I was hopeful, and I’ve tried to just see if this long thread results in anything constructive, but this seems to be going backwards (or at least not forwards).
- The fact is, the pull request you objected to DID NOT TOUCH THE DMA LAYER AT ALL.
- It was literally just another user of it, in a completely separate subdirectory, that didn’t change the code you maintain in _any_ way, shape, or form.
- I find it distressing that you are complaining about new users of your code, and then you keep bringing up these kinds of complete garbage arguments.
- Honestly, what you have been doing is basically saying “as a DMA maintainer I control what the DMA code is used for”.
- And that is not how *any* of this works.
- What’s next? Saying that particular drivers can’t do DMA, because you don’t like that device, and as a DMA maintainer you control who can use the DMA code?
- That’s _literally_ exactly what you are trying to do with the Rust code.
- You are saying that you disagree with Rust – which is fine, nobody has ever required you to write or read Rust code.
- But then you take that stance to mean that the Rust code cannot even use or interface to code you maintain.
- So let me be very clear: if you as a maintainer feel that you control who or what can use your code, YOU ARE WRONG.
- I respect you technically, and I like working with you.
- And no, I am not looking for yes-men, and I like it when you call me out on my bullshit. I say some stupid things at times, there needs to be people who just stand up to me and tell me I’m full of shit.
- But now I’m calling you out on *YOURS*.
- So this email is not about some “Rust policy”. This email is about a much bigger issue: as a maintainer you are in charge of your code, sure – but you are not in charge of who uses the end result and how.
- You don’t have to like Rust. You don’t have to care about it. That’s been made clear pretty much from the very beginning, that nobody is forced to suddenly have to learn a new language, and that people who want to work purely on the C side can very much continue to do so.
- So to get back to the very core of your statement:
- “The document claims no subsystem is forced to take Rust”
- that is very much true.
- You are not forced to take any Rust code, or care about any Rust code in the DMA code. You can ignore it.
- But “ignore the Rust side” automatically also means that you don’t have any *say* on the Rust side.
- You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say “I want to have nothing to do with Rust”, and then in the very next sentence say “And that means that the Rust code that I will ignore cannot use the C interfaces I maintain”.
- Maintainers who *want* to be involved in the Rust side can be involved in it, and by being involved with it, they will have some say in what the Rust bindings look like. They basically become the maintainers of the Rust interfaces too.
- But maintainers who are taking the “I don’t want to deal with Rust” option also then basically will obviously not have to bother with the Rust bindings – but as a result they also won’t have any say on what goes on on the Rust side.
- So when you change the C interfaces, the Rust people will have to deal with the fallout, and will have to fix the Rust bindings. That’s kind of the promise here: there’s that “wall of protection” around C developers that don’t want to deal with Rust issues in the promise that they don’t *have* to deal with Rust.
- But that “wall of protection” basically goes both ways. If you don’t want to deal with the Rust code, you get no *say* on the Rust code.
- Put another way: the “nobody is forced to deal with Rust” does not imply “everybody is allowed to veto any Rust code”.
- See?
- And no, I don’t actually think it needs to be all that black-and-white. I’ve stated the above in very black-and-white terms (“becoming a maintainer of the Rust bindings too” vs “don’t want to deal with Rust at all”), but in many cases I suspect it will be a much less harsh of a line, where a subsystem maintainer may be *aware* of the Rust bindings, and willing to work with the Rust side, but perhaps not hugely actively involved.
- So it really doesn’t have to be an “all or nothing” situation.
- Linus” <End Quote>
- That’s where things currently stand in this Rust debate for Linux kernel code.
Firefox deletes promise to never sell personal data, asks users not to panic Moss
- Joe Brodkin reports for ArsTechnica:
- Firefox maker Mozilla deleted a promise to never sell its users’ personal data and is trying to assure worried users that its approach to privacy hasn’t fundamentally changed. Until recently, a Firefox FAQ promised that the browser maker never has and never will sell its users’ personal data. An archived version from January 30 says:
  - Does Firefox sell your personal data?
  - Nope. Never have, never will. And we protect you from many of the advertisers who do. Firefox products are designed to protect your privacy. That’s a promise.
- That promise is removed from the current version. There’s also a notable change in a data privacy FAQ that used to say, “Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you, and we don’t buy data about you.”
- The data privacy FAQ now explains that Mozilla is no longer making blanket promises about not selling data because some legal jurisdictions define “sale” in a very broad way:
  - Mozilla doesn’t sell data about you (in the way that most people think about “selling data”), and we don’t buy data about you. Since we strive for transparency, and the LEGAL definition of “sale of data” is extremely broad in some places, we’ve had to step back from making the definitive statements you know and love. We still put a lot of work into making sure that the data that we share with our partners (which we need to do to make Firefox commercially viable) is stripped of any identifying information, or shared only in the aggregate, or is put through our privacy preserving technologies (like OHTTP).
- Mozilla didn’t say which legal jurisdictions have these broad definitions.
- Users criticized Mozilla in discussions on GitHub and Reddit. One area of concern is over new terms of use that say, “When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.”
- Update at 10:20 pm ET: Mozilla has since announced a change to the license language to address user complaints. It now says, “You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.”
- Mozilla also took heat from users after a Mozilla employee solicited feedback in a connect.mozilla.org discussion forum. “This isn’t a question of messaging or clarifying,” one person wrote. “You cannot ask your users to give you these broad rights to their data. This agreement, as currently written, is not acceptable.”
- Mozilla announced the new terms of use and an updated privacy policy in a blog post on Wednesday. After seeing criticism, Mozilla added a clarification that said the company needs “a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice.”
- One of the uses described in the privacy notice has to do with users’ location data. Mozilla says it takes steps to anonymize the data and that users can turn the functionality off entirely:
  - Mozilla may also receive location-related keywords from your search (such as when you search for “Boston”) and share this with our partners to provide recommended and sponsored content. Where this occurs, Mozilla cannot associate the keyword search with an individual user once the search suggestion has been served and partners are never able to associate search suggestions with an individual user. You can remove this functionality at any time by turning off Sponsored Suggestions—more information on how to do this is available in the relevant Firefox Support page.
- Some users were not convinced by Mozilla’s statements about needing a license to use data to provide basic functionality. “That’s a load of crap and you know it. ‘Basic functionality’ is to download and render webpages,” one person wrote in response to Mozilla’s request for feedback.

— Play Security Transition Bumper —

Security and Privacy

10 minutes

Doge says it don’t exist

— Play Wanderings Transition Bumper —

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

30 minutes (~5-8 mins each)

Joe
- Well I have done very little 3D printing in the last couple of weeks. Basically one test print to make sure that the slicers and the new version of Octoprint on the Proxmox server were doing as expected.
- Also 3d printed a new PCB and wire holder for soldering that I found interesting. I wanted a longer print to test that the connectivity from Octoprint would not end up being an issue as well plus it will be helpful.
- Speaking of the mini rack and server, I have put all 5 of the 8 Tb hard drives into it and hooked them up to the respective computers. I was also able to get all of the data off the smaller 1 Tb hard drives and onto the larger drives. I also got everything take off of the 4 Tb drive that I had which was the oldest of my other drives. I was going to reformat and re-partition it but that seems to be an issue that I may get into another time. But all my TV shows are much more consolidated now and I should be good for a while yet on the disk space.
- I also set up a couple of the drives that hooked to my main PC as shares so that I could use the storage on them for the server since I still have not taken it apart to hook up the new ram and the adapter so that I can hopefully have some more ‘internal’ drives for that. It worked pretty well and while I can tell that load times are slower since it is over a network, it is not bad enough that I would not use it.
- Turnkey along with the Proxmox helper scripts are very useful. I was able to get the Nextcloud turnkey setup very easy and very quickly and I will eventually work on migrating all the other Nextcloud setup that I have over to it and see how well that works.
- I also got started down the rabbit hole that is Home Assistant. After some of the announcements coming out of Amazon in regards to what is going on with Alexa, I wanted to try my hand at migrating to something that I control locally. I have spent several sleepless nights trying to get things set up. There is a lot of things that you have to setup from the config files which is fun but the voice assistant requires a proper SSL cert and as much as I followed the instructions I am not able to get duckdns and letsencrypt to work together and get the cert verified so that it will work.
- Still I was able to get a good chunk of the items that I use with Alexa to be available on my dashboard. Along with live views of my Ring cameras. And for some of the items that I was not able to get on there directly I am able to control with webhooks so they are at least available on home assistant if still on Alexa. Some of the plugs are Amazon specific. I may be able to reflash them or simply un-pair them and re-pair them using the TUYA app which seems to make things “seeable” for Homeassistant. TUYA seems to be compatible with many other brands of automated devices that normally want you to use their own applications.
- I probably should have done it from a full VM instead of from a volume. From my reading it looks like several of the applications that I use are a lot easier to setup from the VM and will install directly instead of having to be done from the config files. But I am impressed with how it is running for now and will continue to see what I can migrate to it and away from Amazon.
- I also started adding a voice assistant to Home Assistant. This was a much larger problem for me. Most of the setup with the text to speech and the speech to text turned out ok but I had a lot of problems setting up the SSL for the node on Proxmox in the first place. A lot of the issue turned out to be the static DNS I was using and the availability that it had at the time but eventually I got it done.
- Only to find out that was not good enough, it worked for being able to access Proxmox itself without any issues over https, which I have since shut down, but did not propagate that SSL to the volumes on the cluster. Don’t know why I thought it would.
- I need to setup nginx reverse proxy but for the mean time what I did was go into the node and create a self signed certificate for local traffic which made it so that chrome would allow the use of the microphone and I could try out the assistant.
- It worked but my next steps will be to change out the conversation agent to something a little smarter, also will need to keep adding in more of the devices that seem to only work for Alexa.
- I am also going to be moving my audiobookshelf onto the rack. Either with the network share or after I have the internal SATA adapter working the way that I want it to. I will probably use it as an excuse to make a full copy of all of my audio media
- I now have all the parts for the upgrades that I want to do. The ram and the lateral right angle SATA cables and the extenders and the m.2 SATA adapter. No more excuses before I find out how well things work. I may have to say to heck with it and do some modification to the casing if I want to use that m.2 adapter. But first I need to see if it works.
Moss
- Our migration away from Amazon has not been smooth, and has not been completed. I’m not completely certain it is even underway. But we are trying to cut back on paying Jeff Bezos for things.
- I had 3 more job assignments cancelled due to weather… and the weather is not that bad here. Finally got to work one day on Monday. Two work days since the first of the year.
- My wife and I took a mid-week trip to visit an old friend (and listener), and then to visit one of my two cousins who live in Tennessee. We would have visited the other, but the weather forecast spoke against going into Nashville. I got to play some music for everyone, which was fun. I haven’t seen these cousins since my wedding, and 55 years before that since my previous visit.
- I’m back to regular Bodhi Linux 7 AppPack on my studio machine, which matches my laptop. I had only two issues with DeBodhi 7 b3, and one of them did not get solved to my satisfaction, which is how DeBodhi works with Grub Customizer. It runs and saves the file… in a location which it then does not use at bootup time. The other issue, which was fixable, is that the build of Debian used in DeBodhi had os_prober turned off.
- I had to replace the battery on one of my UPSs. It cost $43 plus tax, which was cheaper by far than it would have cost to replace the entire UPS. The guys at Batteries Plus did installation and everything, and recycled the battery plus recycled two other old batteries (one UPS, one laptop) that I had waiting around to take to them.
- I am happy to say that our first Bodhi Corner was a rousing success. I had most of the Bodhi team and several other Bodhi users chime in with praise. There should be something in our Vibrations later.
Majid
Eric

— Play Innards Transition Bumper —

Linux Innards

30 minutes (~5-8 minutes each)

Linux-Native Devices
- Desktops/Towers
  - Dell
  - HP
  - Lenovo
  - System76
  - Framework (uses a laptop motherboard)
- Laptops
  - Lenovo (a few models)
  - Dell (a few models)
  - System76 (US)
  - Entroware (UK)
  - Juno (UK)
  - Tuxedo (Germany)
  - Slimbook (Spain)
  - Framework (International, distributed from Taiwan, also puts Windows on the same hardware)
  - Pine64 (Pinebook, Pinebook Pro)
  - Minisforum (Taiwan, several international stores)
- Tablets
  - Pine64
    - PineTab, PineTab 2, Pinetab V
    - PineNote
- Phones
  - Pine64 – PinePhone, PinePhone Pro
  - Purism – Liberty Phone, Librem5
  - Volla
  - Murena, Fairphone (/e/ OS)
  - SageTea Edge (based on OnePlus phone, Ubuntu Touch)
  - Pro1 X – slide-out, built-in physical keyboard!
- Mini PCs
  - System 76
  - Purism
  - TUXEDO
  - Beelink
  - BOSGAME
- SBC’s
  - ZIMA?
  - RPi 12345
  - Orange Pi
  - Rock64/Quartz 64
  - way too many to name, might want to research SBCs with Intel N chips.
    - N100 is hot right now

–Play Bodhi Corner Transition Bumper*–

Bodhi Corner

5 minutes

The Bodhi team has started some preliminary work on packaging and plans for Bodhi Linux 8 on Debian Trixie base. Stefan has some new themes already that look terrific.
The Moksha configuration file for both BL7 and BL8 is being moved to XDG_CONFIG_HOME and following freedesktop standards, so there will be no hidden .e folder in the home directory. It will be in $HOME/.config/e or whatever the user has set XDG_CONFIG_HOME to. This involves some code changes to Moksha, and this ability is set by a compile option when one compiles Moksha. The hidden .e folder stays as it is in BL7 so users do not lose their configs and have to deal with copying it over.
Also, starting with this change, there will now be an environmental variable set E_HOME_DIR that contains the location of the moksha config file. This will work in BL7 and BL8 as soon as Robert repackages Moksha for BL7. This already works on Trixie of course.
In the same way, the elementary config file is also moving to XDG_CONFIG_HOME by compiling it with that option. No more hidden .elementary folder in your home directory. This option is only on BL8.
Sadly, there is no easy way to tell where elementary stores its config file aside from writing some C code to get that location.
This all was motivated by Robert moving as many things out of $HOME on my own machines as I could. If anything stored a config there, and there was any way to it to move it to .config or elsewhere, it was done. So Robert thought he may as fix Moksha and compile EFL to also honor XDG_CONFIG_HOME as they should.
Another change coming in BL8 is EFL is being compiled with support for avif and jxl images. This means one can set the background to an image of this form now. One could also use an image of these formats in a theme, altho none of our themes do. Plus Thunar was patched to support setting the background to avif or jxl images in Moksha.
Stefan has added his separator module to Moksha and has finished work on the wallscape module — a really cool module to set the background more flashy than the native one in Moksha.
Packages coming soon:
- All of our extra modules in BL7 and BL8 got converted to meson Build. They were autotools but meson build is easier to work with, compiles faster, does not mess up the source code directory and more. Autotools is complex as f*** and hard to debug. This is a change hidden from our users but it was a lot of work. Meson is more modern and many repos are moving to it or some other alternative to autotools.
- Also Stefan is planning on starting work on a new theme for BL8 probably based loosely on our ice theme. Bodhi 8 is also going to try moving towards a lighter theme; while many of us love dark themes and use them and will continue to use them, we decided it is time for a change.
On February 24^th, Moksha and all themes were updated, and they released the Wallscape module for picking wallpapers/backgrounds. Wallscape was another forgotten E module which needed substantial cleanup, and is now in the BL7 repos.
And, finally, Bodhi Linux now has a Patreon page, https://www.patreon.com/bodhilinux, which also includes monthly newsletters from Robert Wiley on the current progress of all facets of the OS.

— Play Vibrations Transition Bumper —

Vibrations from the Ether

20 minutes (~5 minutes each)

GGH ([email protected])
- Hey Moss, I really love the new Bodhi Corner section of the show! I’ve been a loyal listener for a while and I knew you were a fan of Bodhi, which is how I first discovered it. It’s fantastic that this will be a regular part of the show. I absolutely adore Bodhi Linux and have it installed on all my non-HiDPI devices. I wish I could use it on all my machines, but I face significant challenges with scaling on 4K displays. While the scaling settings help a bit, some elements still appear too small. I managed to get it looking pretty decent on 2K, though. I’m hoping for improved HiDPI support in future releases, ideally with a more straightforward setup, so I can enjoy it on all my devices. Keep up the great work with the show, and I can’t wait for the next episode!
- Thanks, GGH
(Moss) I also got a little notice on Mastodon from Jill Bryant Ryniker of the LWDW podcast that she has been a mintCast listener since Episode #10! I’ve been finally listening to LWDW the past few months and really love it, nice that she spread the love right back. (Linux Weekly Daily Wednesdays is a news podcast which is a companion to their Saturday gaming podcast.)

— 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 think we should be talking about, tell us!

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Next Episode – 2 pm US Central time on Sunday, March 16, 2025.
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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 the other two podcasts I am on, Linux OTC (with Eric & Majid) 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 – 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:

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!>

— Play Closing Music and Standard Outro —

Episode 456 Show Notes