Welcome to mintCast

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

This is Episode 459!

This is Episode 459.5!

Recorded on Sunday, April 13, 2025.

Fresh off the farm, I’m Joe; reorganized, I’m Moss; surviving, I’m Majid

— Play Standard Intro —

• First up in the news: Mint Monthly News, Linux 6.16 To Add Asahi UAPI Header For Apple Silicon, Switzerland battles privacy intrusions, Firefox adds HEVC playback in Linux, Debian releases APT 3.0, Apple may add Mx GCC core support, Git turns 20, ProtonMail adds advanced features, ArcoLinux ends it all;
• In security and privacy:
• Then in our Wanderings: Bill is having trouble on the road and won’t be here, Joe returns to us, Moss juggles tablets, Majid learns things, and Eric is AWOL

• In our Innards section: we talk travel computing;
• In Bodhi Corner, Robert Wiley releases a script which can be used to install Moksha on any version of Debian, including Trixie;
• 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 – March 2025 Majid
  • From the Mint blog (via londoner)
  • Clem has given us a preview of some changes that are planned for upcoming releases. First, the search functionality in Nemo has been enhanced. A new filter was added to find files using regular expressions matching their filenames.
  • Support has been added for keyboard layouts and input methods to Cinnamon in Wayland. This will, hopefully, be included in the next release.It’s functional but it’s not fully ready yet. Although it’s great news for Wayland compatibility, it can impact toolkit compatibility and input methods for Asian languages. We need a little bit more time to finalize it and properly test it.
  • LMDE 7, which will be based on the next version of Debian Stable, will come with full support for OEM installations. Thanks to OEM installs, Linux Mint can be pre-installed on computers which are sold throughout the world. It’s a very important feature and it’s one of the very few remaining things which wasn’t supported by LMDE. OEM stands for “Original Equipment Manufacturers”. It’s used to refer not only to manufacturers but to any company big or small which sells computers. This feature is also used by individuals who either donate or sell their computers.
  • When you prepare a computer to be sold, you don’t know its future user. You can’t select the username or the password. Big companies might not even know the user’s language, timezone or keyboard layout. So this feature allows the system to be pre-installed on the computer, without selecting user details. These details are later asked to the user via a first-run wizard when the computer is turned on.
  • The Mint team is changing how they handle version numbers for the JavaScript engine that powers the Cinnamon desktop. Previously, the JavaScript interpreter (CJS) shared the same version number as the Cinnamon desktop environment and was only updated when Cinnamon itself was updated. Moving forward, CJS will be versioned according to the Mozilla JavaScript engine it uses, and will be updated independently from Cinnamon. This means:
    • Updates can happen more frequently and efficiently
    • New JavaScript engine improvements can be added without waiting for a full Cinnamon release
    • The desktop environment can work with multiple versions of the JavaScript engine
  • This change will especially benefit Linux distributions like Debian and Ubuntu, making it easier for them to ship Cinnamon without having to maintain multiple versions of the Mozilla JavaScript engine.
• Linux 6.16 To Add Asahi UAPI Header For Apple Silicon Graphics But No Actual Driver Yet Joe
  • From Phoronix (via londoner)
  • Submitted today via DRM-Misc-Next for queuing in DRM-Next until the Linux 6.16 merge window in June is the Asahi driver user-space API “UAPI” header. This is the user-space API intended for the Asahi kernel graphics driver for supporting the Apple M-Series graphics hardware under Linux. But due to being written in the Rust programming language and various kernel abstractions not yet ready among other obstacles, only the user-space API header is set to be added and not yet introducing the actual Direct Rendering Manager driver.
  • Alyssa Rosenzweig has been working to upstream the user-space API header file for the Asahi driver to the mainline Linux kernel to ease in building the Mesa drivers against the mainline kernel rather than requiring any out-of-tree header files. The plan is to eventually have the Asahi kernel graphics driver in the mainline Linux kernel but more upstream work needs to happen first prior to that actually materializing.
  • Rosenzweig explained in the patch for just adding the UAPI bits:
    • <Quote>”This adds the UAPI for the Asahi driver targeting the GPU in the Apple M1 and M2 series systems on chip. The UAPI design is based on other modern Vulkan-capable drivers, including Xe and Panthor. Memory management is based on explicit VM management. Synchronization is exclusively explicit sync.
    • This UAPI is validated against our open source Mesa stack, which is fully conformant to the OpenGL 4.6, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 3.0, and Vulkan 1.4 standards. The Vulkan driver supports sparse, exercising the VM_BIND mechanism.
    • This patch adds the standalone UAPI header. It is implemented by an open source DRM driver written in Rust. We fully intend to upstream this driver when possible. However, as a production graphics driver, it depends on a significant number of Rust abstractions that will take a long time to upstream. In the mean time, our userspace is upstream in Mesa but is not allowed to probe with upstream Mesa as the UAPI is not yet reviewed and merged in the upstream kernel. Although we ship a patched Mesa in Fedora Asahi Remix, any containers shipping upstream Mesa builds are broken for our users, including upstream Flatpak and Waydroid runtimes. Additionally, it forces us to maintain forks of Mesa and virglrenderer, which complicates bisects.
    • The intention in sending out this patch is for this UAPI to be thoroughly reviewed. Once we as the DRM community are satisfied with the UAPI, this header lands signifying that the UAPI is stable and must only be evolved in backwards-compatible ways; it will be the UAPI implemented in the DRM driver that eventually lands upstream. That promise lets us enable upstream Mesa, solving all these issues while the upstream Rust abstractions are developed.”
  • So it’s a step forward for open-source Apple M1 and M2 graphics but with Linux 6.16 there won’t be any actual usable mainline kernel graphics driver. At this stage there is just M1/M2 support with the newest M4 hardware expected to be a struggle for Linux support.
  • Subsequently the Mesa Asahi AGX/Honeykrisp drivers have seen this MR merged today for Mesa 25.1 to use that to-be-mainlined user-space API. This is intended to work with both the OpenGL and Vulkan (Honeykrisp) drivers to work out-of-the-box with the upstream Mesa and a capable kernel driver / future yet-to-be-known mainline kernel version.
• Secure encryption and online anonymity are now at risk in Switzerland Moss
  • from TechRadar
  • Switzerland is considering amending its surveillance law to expand into new types of monitoring and data collection.
  • The changes – which experts argue will put people’s anonymity and secure encryption at risk – would widen the net of impacted service providers to virtual private networks (VPNs), messaging apps, and social networks, having previously only impacted mobile networks and internet service providers (ISPs).
  • Consultations are now public and open until May 6, 2025. Speaking to TechRadar, NymVPN has explained how it’s planning to fight against it, alongside encrypted messaging app Threema and Proton, the provider behind one of the best VPN and secure email services on the market.
  • Authorities’ arguments behind the need for accessing more data are always the same – catching criminals and improving security. Yet, according to Nym’s co-founder and COO, Alexis Roussel, being forced to leave more data behind would achieve the opposite result.
  • “Less anonymity online is not going to make things better,” he told TechRadar. “For example, enforcing identification of all these small services will eventually push to leaks, more data theft, and more attacks on people.”
  • The amendment aims to expand the number of service providers targeted to include so-called “derived service providers.”This categorisation would aim to include any online service with a turnover of $100 million or more than 5,000 active users.
  • As per the official announcement, “three types of information and two types of monitoring are also being created as a result of this revision.” Put simply, the likes of NymVPN and Proton VPN would be forced to modify how they handle their encryption technology and their privacy policies around securing the anonymity of their users.
  • Considering the pushback against encryption backdoors, Switzerland seems to be taking a different approach. Yet, according to Roussel, this is more of a “play on words.”
  • “It’s not about end-to-end encryption. They don’t want to force you to reveal what’s inside the communication itself, but they want to know where it goes,” Roussel explains. “They realize the value is not in what is being said but who you are talking to.”
  • Beyond encryption, the mandatory identification provision is what most concerns Nym and others in the Swiss privacy tech industry right now.
  • “The whole point of security and privacy is not being able to link the usage to the person. That’s the most critical thing,” Roussel told TechRadar.
  • It’s important to note that the current amendment is not subject to a parliamentary vote or public referendum under Swiss law. Nonetheless, a public consultation is now ongoing, so everyone can partake.
  • Nym confirmed to TechRadar that the team has already started to build a strategy to fight against it with Proton and Threema – and they hope more people will follow suit.
  • The plan focuses on showing the damage these changes will have for citizens’ online security and the wider Swiss tech industry.
  • “Nym is still small, but Proton and Threema are very prominent companies in Switzerland,” said Roussel, pointing out how the Swiss Army itself is using the latter service exactly for its well-known high level of security.
  • “I think we have good arguments, and I think the best argument we have is to show them that they would lose in front of a tribunal.”
• Mozilla Firefox 137 Is Available with HEVC Playback Support on Linux, Tab Groups -Majid
  • from 9to5 Linux
  • Mozilla published the final build of the Firefox 137 open-source web browser for all supported platforms ahead of the April 1st, 2025, official release date, so it’s time to take a look at the new features and changes.
  • Highlights of Firefox 137 include HEVC playback support on Linux systems, the ability to identify all links in PDF files and turn them into hyperlinks, the ability to sign PDF documents without leaving Firefox, and support for using the address bar as a calculator.
  • “Simply type an arithmetic expression and view the result in the address bar drop-down. Clicking on this result will copy it to your clipboard,” said Mozilla. The company also stated that not all users will get this feature as it is being rolled out progressively, and the same goes for the feature to sign PDFs.
  • Another new feature that is being rolled out progressively starting with this release is the long anticipated tab grouping. Users will be able to group tabs by either selecting the tabs they want to group and right-clicking on any of them to group the selected tabs or by dragging a tab over another. Tab groups can be named and colored.
  • “Stay productive and organized with less effort by grouping related tabs together. One simple way to create a group is to drag a tab onto another, pause until you see a highlight, then drop to create the group. Groups can be named, color-coded, and are always saved. You can close a group and reopen it later,” reads the release notes.
  • In addition, Firefox 137 refreshes the address bar with new features like a unified search button, search term persistence, contextual search mode, contextual search engine options, and intuitive search keywords.
  • Firefox 137 also introduces two new options in the Browser Layout section under General settings, allowing users to switch between horizontal and vertical tab layouts in addition to the Show sidebar option that was introduced in the Firefox 136 release with the new vertical tabs feature.
  • Firefox 137 lets users set up the browser with Horizontal or Vertical tabs
  • For web developers, Mozilla Firefox 137 updates the Inspector Fonts panel to display fonts metadata, such as version, designer, vendor, license, etc., updates the Network panel to allow overriding network request responses with local files, and adds support for the SVG 2 path API and the hyphenate-limit-chars property.
  • Firefox 137 is available for download for 32-bit, 64-bit, and AArch64 (ARM64) Linux systems right now from Mozilla’s FTP server. As mentioned before, Mozilla plans to officially release Firefox 137 tomorrow, April 1st, 2025, when it will roll out as an OTA (Over-the-Air) update to macOS and Windows users.
• APT 3.0 Debian Package Manager Released with Revamped Command-Line Interface joe
  • from 9to5 Linux
  • The Debian Project released APT 3.0 today as the new stable series for Debian’s command-line interface (CLI) for managing packages, a major release that introduces new features and many enhancements.
  • APT 3.0 package manager gives users a concise and well-laid-out command-line output when updating, installing, or removing packages via the terminal emulator. The new APT 3.0 command-line interface brings a columnar display that will make it easier for users to scan for a package name.
  • The revamped command-line interface also features support for colors (red for removals and green for other changes), which makes it easier to distinguish commands at a glance, as well as a smoother install progress bar that uses Unicode blocks.
  • In addition, the new APT 3.0 command-line interface is less verbose and offers more padding to make it easier to separate sections and extract the relevant information for you. You can see a comparison between the new APT 3.0 UI and the current APT UI in the featured screenshot above, thanks to Julian Andres Klode.
  • APT 3.0 also introduces a new solver (using the –solver option) that allows APT to fallback to non-candidate versions and makes autoremove more aggressive, keeping only the strongest automatically installed packages.
  • Among other noteworthy changes, APT 3.0 introduces support for –target-release in ‘apt list’, a –comment option to record Comment: in history, support for uncompressed indexes from partial file:/ mirrors, a git-like automatic pager for apt(8), emulating git behavior, and initial pinning information to apt show –full.
  • It also adds support for debian-ports modernization, introduces the modernize-sources command, support for correctly calculating the kernel size in /boot, support for OpenSSL replacing GnuTLS and gcrypt, transaction support and upgrade count for pkgDepCache, as well as many documentation and translation updates.
  • The APT 3.0 release is dedicated to the late Steve Langasek, an Ubuntu and Debian contributor, and it will be the default command-line interface for the upcoming Debian GNU/Linux 13 “Trixie” operating system series, due out in June-July 2025, and, as well as Ubuntu 25.04, which should be available later this April.
  • Check out the release announcement page for more details about the changes included in this major APT release and if you want to download the source package to compile it on your Debian-based GNU/Linux distribution.
• Apple M1 / M2 / M3 Core Support Might Soon Be Merged For The GCC Compiler – Majid
  • from Phoronix
  • When it comes to compiler support for Apple Silicon and their hardware at large, Apple has long been focused on the LLVM/Clang toolchain given their long history with it, employing many of the developers, and Xcode being based on LLVM. The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) though may soon see upstream support for the newer Apple Cores thanks to the work of GCC developer Iain Sandoe along with the input of engineers from Arm and the Apple open-source team.
  • Recently posted to the GCC patches mailing list was the newest revision of the initial implementation of Apple Cores support for GCC on AArch64 Darwin (macOS). This adds new compiler targets for the apple-m1, apple-m2, and apple-m3 along with the A12 SoC via apple-a12.
  • So should you want to be running GCC on macOS with Apple Silicon, it’s looking like this patch for the “Apple Cores” support could soon be merged for targeting the capabilities of these ARM CPU cores.
  • From the Arm side at least the latest version looks good and unblocks others from potentially providing their sign-offs. It’s possible this Apple Cores support for GCC could still be merged at the last minute ahead of the GCC 15.1 compiler stable release due out in the coming weeks. We’ll see if this patch manages to make it in time for the GCC 15 compiler release or if it’s diverted into GCC 16 Git. In any event it’s coming for those wanting to see optimized Apple Silicon support with GCC as an alternative to LLVM.
• Git Distributed Version Control System Turned 20 joe
  • from Linuxiac
  • April 7th was a special day—not just for the open source community, but for software development worldwide. One of the most essential tools in modern development turned 20 years old. Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about the legendary distributed version control system, Git!
  • The story behind Git’s creation is tied to interesting facts many might not know, so let me share a few.
  • First, it might surprise you that the creator of Git is none other than Linus Torvalds. Yep, that’s right—the same Linus Torvalds who developed Linux, the free and open-source operating system that has ruled the server world for many years and is now gaining more ground on desktops, too.
  • In the early 2000s, he and other Linux kernel developers used a distributed version control system called BitKeeper (now defunct). The catch? It was proprietary software protected by patents and copyrights.
  • Things took a turn when the company behind BitKeeper claimed that one of the developers was using reverse engineering techniques against BitKeeper to build an open-source software called SourcePuller. This tool acted as a client that could communicate with BitKeeper.
  • That incident turned out to be the last straw for Torvalds. He decided it was time to build a distributed, open-source version control system that not only matched but surpassed BitKeeper’s capabilities—and gave kernel developers a more powerful and flexible way to collaborate.
  • Then came the actual coding of the first working version, taking Torvalds… you guessed it, a full ten days. After that, he continued to maintain Git for the next four months. Reflecting on it in an interview for Git’s 20th anniversary, he shared:
    • Git was never a big thing for me. It was a, “I need to get this done to do the kernel.”
  • Is there really anything more to say after a statement like that? It seems that in his early years, Torvalds had a real passion for hobby projects that were ‘not much’—yes, that’s a nod to Linux—but ended up changing the software world forever.
  • Believe it or not, these days, everything from the software in the chip that brews your morning coffee to the systems launching rockets into space relies on Git to develop and manage their code.
  • Beyond its impressive (and undeniable) technical strengths, Git’s real beauty lies in its distributed nature. Instead of relying on a centralized server for every last operation, Git stores full versions of the project history locally.
  • Consequently, developers can commit changes, browse revisions, or create new branches while working offline. When it’s time to synchronize, they simply pull the latest code and push their own contributions to a remote repository, such as GitHub, GitLab, Gitea, Bitbucket, or whatever.
  • If you’re involved in software development in any way, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Honestly, it’s hard to imagine the field existing without Git—it’s just that essential. That’s why I often wonder: which of Linus Torvalds’ contributions had a bigger impact—creating Linux or spending ten days building Git? It’s a fun question to think about.
  • One thing’s for sure: Git has completely transformed how software is built. It’s become a cornerstone of the modern tech world—something we truly can’t imagine working without. And from the looks of it, that’s not changing anytime soon. So here’s to Git on its 20th anniversary—you truly changed everything!
  • You can check out the full interview with Linus Torvalds in GitHub’s anniversary blog post.
• FerenOS 2025.03 Released Moss
  • from Distrowatch
  • Dominic Hayes has announced the release of Feren OS 2025.03, a significant update of the project’s desktop-oriented Linux distribution with KDE Plasma as the preferred desktop, now based on Ubuntu 22.04: “Today, it is time I announce the release of Feren OS 2025.03, a minor rebase update for Feren OS that takes the existing, delayed, work on what was originally meant to be 2023.07 but was delayed due to requiring work on a new Store to conclude, and packages what is currently complete from it into a new stable release of Feren OS, while also porting 2023.04’s missing applications, to fill in the gaps the new Store will soon fill, for the time being. Feren OS finally uses an Ubuntu 22.04 LTS base in this release, bringing with it a whole slew of improvements and software updates, making the Feren OS experience even better than before. Previous versions of Feren OS were based on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and with this rebase comes support until the end of April 2027.” Continue to the release announcement for a detailed list of all changes and improvements.
• Proton Mail Is Getting Some of Gmail’s Best Features Moss
  • from HowToGeek
  • If you’re a fan of Proton’s popular Mail and Calendar apps, we have some good news. This week, the Swiss company revealed that Proton Mail is about to get its biggest overhaul yet, full of features we’ve come to expect from Gmail, along with all-new apps for Android and iOS.
  • While it all started with Proton Mail, the privacy-focused company now has an entire ecosystem of apps. Two of its most popular—Mail and Calendar—are being completely rebuilt from the ground up this spring, delivering new features, improved controls, better iPad support, faster performance, and more. While these apps are currently under testing, here’s what you can expect in the coming months.
  • First, Proton Mail is getting a huge overhaul with massive quality-of-life improvements. Some of its changes last year brought it closer to Gmail, without the privacy concerns, and that’s going to continue here in 2025.
  • The Proton Mail app for Android and iOS will get a new Category View, making organizing emails by type and which ones send you notifications easier. The new “Attachment View” will be one place to see every file you’ve ever received, from receipts to important documents, and an easier way to save any of those files directly to Proton Drive from the Mail app. Here’s what Anant Vijay, Product lead for Proton Mail, had to say about this upcoming release:
  • “This spring and summer, we’re launching some of the biggest Proton Mail updates yet. With smarter ways to manage your inbox and faster, rebuilt mobile apps, we’re giving you more ways to stay organized and get things done — all while staying firmly in charge of your data.”
  • The company is also integrating a new newsletter management feature to track all your subscriptions, offline mode, advanced message search, and improved speed and performance. A lot of this sounds like the category and subscription controls in Gmail, which are pretty popular.
  • Proton app icons with blurred Google app icons in the background.
  • Additionally, Proton Mail for Business will get new solutions that make it easy to use a custom domain, and email retention controls to define how long emails get saved. Overall, these sound like excellent changes that bring Proton closer to some of the most popular email apps on the market. Again, this is currently under development and testing, with a release date scheduled for this summer.
  • Additionally, look out for a vastly improved Proton Calendar app this summer. While the company will revamp aspects and features of Proton Calendar for all platforms, some of the biggest changes are for the iPad.
  • The all-new Proton Calendar app for iOS will have improved iPad support, a highly requested feature. Other changes to the Calendar app for Android and iOS include edit access for shared calendars, new home screen widgets, and more. Further down the road, Proton aims to support much-requested features like tasks, search capabilities, and offline access inside the Calendar.
  • While we wait for the all-new Proton Mail app and improved Calendar apps, the company is still busy adding new features to its Drive and Docs apps. You can even get Proton VPN for free inside the Vivaldi browser.
• A farewell to the ArcoLinux University Moss
  • from ArcoLinux blog
  • After eight years of dedication to the ArcoLinux project and the broader Linux community, the time has come for me to step away.
  • This decision wasn’t made lightly. But as I approach 60, I’ve found myself with less energy, less focus, and making small mistakes that remind me I’m no longer at my peak. I want to leave ArcoLinux while it’s still strong, and while I can look back with pride at everything we’ve accomplished together.
  • Since day one, ArcoLinux has stood for education, experimentation, and empowerment. I didn’t just want to build a distro — I wanted to help people learn Linux, love Linux, and grow into confident users, tinkerers, and developers.
  • Here are just a few milestones I’m proud of:
    • Over 5,000 educational videos on YouTube — covering everything from Arch basics to advanced configurations.
    • The creation of ArcoInstall, a flexible and evolving installer experience for learning-by-doing.
    • Carli (Custom Arch Linux ISO) – a full educational project teaching you how to build your own Arch-based ISO from scratch.
    • ALCI (Arch Linux Calamares Installer) – demonstrating how to combine Arch power with graphical simplicity.
    • ArcoPlasma, ArcoNet, ArcoPro, Ariser – each tailored to different use cases and learning paths.
    • Countless hours spent on forums, Discord, Telegram, and email, helping users solve problems, understand systems, and grow.
    • Encouraging people to try Bspwm, i3, Chadwm, Xmonad, Qtile, AwesomeWM, and many more tiling window managers.
    • Teaching how to build AUR packages, create your own repos, and dive deep into pacman, zsh, bash, systemd, and beyond.
  • We weren’t just maintaining a distro — we were teaching a mindset.
  • Aging is humbling. As I near 60, I’ve come to realize I simply don’t have the same mental sharpness or stamina I used to. I catch myself making little mistakes — the kind that matter when you’re maintaining an ecosystem with this many moving parts.
  • Rather than let that diminish the quality of ArcoLinux, I choose to leave it while it’s still stable, respected, and valuable.
  • I don’t have big plans. I want to slow down, enjoy life, and maybe tinker with Linux just for fun again — without the pressure of running a large project.
  • The code, the videos, the documentation — they’ll remain online for others to learn from, fork, or remix. I truly hope others will take inspiration from it. Just as I was inspired by the community years ago.
  • To every user, contributor, tester, question-asker, and silent learner: thank you. You kept me going on the hard days. You turned this from a solo effort into a true community. Please… keep experimenting. Keep breaking things. Keep learning. And always:
  • Have fun with Linux.
  • Warm regards,
  • ArcoLinux Team – ArcoLinux Betatesters
• ParticleOS: Systemd’s Very Own Linux Distro in Making – Majid
  • Systemd is the system and service manager used by most Linux-based operating systems. It is responsible for initializing the system during boot, starting and subsequently managing services and background processes, handling D-Bus service activation, and managing dependencies between services using a transactional, dependency-based model.
  • Building on all of this, the systemd community is currently developing their own experimental Linux distribution called ParticleOS.
  • What’s Happening: I got to know about this development from Brodie’s latest video, where he discussed the presentation by systemd maintainer Daan De Meyer during the FOSDEM 2025 event.
  • As for what it is, ParticleOS is a fully customizable immutable Linux distribution developed by the systemd community for users who want complete control over their system images. It enables users to choose the base distribution, select installed packages, and cryptographically sign the image for added security.
  • What to Expect: ParticleOS uses mkosi for building images, letting users craft an image-based Linux distribution that’s signed with their own keys, allowing full control over the Linus system’s packages, update process, security mechanisms, and more.
  • The user even has the freedom to pick between different Linux distro bases like Fedora and Arch Linux, with additional distro support opening up when the necessary config files are provided.
  • At any given time, ParticleOS is in sync with the latest systemd features, often incorporating the latest improvements before they are widely adopted in mainstream Linux distributions.
  • In its current state, ParticleOS seems well-suited for developers who want full control over their system. However, I doubt that this will appeal to most regular users due to its specialized nature, which involves having knowledge of custom image building and how systemd works.

— Play Security Transition Bumper —

Security and Privacy

10 minutes

— Play Wanderings Transition Bumper —

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

30 minutes (~5-8 mins each)

• Joe
  • I had a rough couple of weeks.
  • I went to Iowa and spent a week at my foster mother’s house and was a pallbearer for my foster father, Bob. I am not going to go much into that other than to say that he was a good man and he will be missed.
  • It was different being back on the farm after 30ish years. The internet was not great but honestly it was better than I was expecting. Fluctuated between 1 and 4 Mbps. Not spectacular but usable.
  • I had an issue with Plex while I was there and I don’t know why. I know they made some changes to how Plex works and who can stream, but I have a lifetime pass and it should have worked.
  • They required me to update the server using their repos in order to stream and I had to use my Proxmox server to log into my home router and re-setup the port forwarding for ssh in order to do it, but that worked fine.
  • I was able to get a stream started but it would buffer for long periods, and when I would go to change the stream quality it would crash.
  • But I was able to use sshfs to watch TV shows and movies with VLC just fine so long as I had the compression set and a good connection to the wifi. I left Texas in a hurry and I knew I should have grabbed one of my travel routers but didn’t find the one I was looking for in time. So I will be putting one of the ones without a battery into a kit in my car from now on.
  • Jellyfin also worked fine on a lower power device on my home network so I don’t know what the issue with Plex was.
  • I guess my computer at home must have shut down at some point and powered back up which meant that my Nextcloud was also down and so was a bunch of my automation because of it. Thankfully with the Proxmox setup I could use the Mint VM to open an X2Go session to log in to that computer and also turn on the VM on there that is used for a bunch of other automations.
  • Then after the router setup I was easily able to use X2Go directly. Just grabbed the session that I had already started and off to the races. Although I didn’t want to start chrome because I use all of those tabs and sometimes you lose the history opening things in a remote session.
  • I also want to thank Brad for buying me a coffee on ko-fi. The timing was perfect and I really do appreciate it I was trying to convince my foster mother that she did not need to pay me back for the money I used to come to Iowa when I got the notification. So thank you for the coffee and for being the first to send me something on ko-fi.
  • I also started setting up a VM on the rack with openwrt using a tutorial from Novaspirit Tech. RIP. I am doing it a bit different but it is coming along and I hope to have it done and be able to tell about it next show.
  • I was planning on reformatting my gaming laptop before the show today but last night I had small issue where my garage computer just suddenly turned off and would not turn back on.
  • I disconnected everything on it and was able to get it to turn on once but was not able to get it to turn on again. This lead me to believe that the issue was the power supply. Sadly this happened in the evening and I was not able to go get one from Microcenter. But I did order one to show up this morning from Amazon.
  • It did show me that I also need to work on decoupling some of the items that use on the server rack from my garage computer for when things like this happen. Some of my VM images are on there and they when I did it it made sense because I did not have the drive space on the rack for it. But since I put on the 8tb drive and the two 250gb’s I should migrate as much I can to the rack. Including the backup of my audio collection so that I can still listen to books when one of the systems is non-functional.
• Moss
  • I got my requested teaching assignment in on this past Thursday. It is nice that the teacher was inspired by listening to FCWN, but I still couldn’t get the kids to be that interested in computer operating systems — but a couple of them checked out FCWN.
  • I had a special ring break, probably not repairable. I ordered a replacement, somewhat different in that it’s a fidget ring, and while it took 5 weeks to arrive (didn’t know I was ordering from India on Etsy), it’s here and I’m loving it.
  • I sold my PineTab2. To the guy who sold it to me. At the same price. I love our listeners! I have purchased a Surface Pro 6^th Gen off eBay for about the same price, and I’m going to post my Kindle Oasis on eBay to cover the difference and get a few more bucks.
  • I did find a short video which stated it was blindingly simple to convert a Fire tablet to being just an Android tablet. I looked at it… and sent it to Joe to figure out first. As he was just on his way back from Iowa, I figure it will be a bit before he can get to it. The end result of this could be that I don’t need to buy a Kobo reader after all…
  • I had to replace the outer tie rod ends on my Mazda. The dealership told me several months ago that the rubber on them was deteriorating, but was not a major issue. This is the most durable car I’ve ever owned, and I’m going to take care of it. Besides, it also gets upward of 35 mpg.
  • I’m told the sound quality on my audio was not up to snuff last episode. I think I’ve figured out what the problem was, if it wasn’t just that Craig did not like running on Joe’s system (we usually record with Craig on Bill’s hardware). If the issue continues, I could always go back to an Audacity recording.
  • I have now been doing Full Circle Weekly News for over 4 years. I need a participation trophy for that. FCM did buy my Samson microphone, so that’s something.
  • Only 14 months left on my Mother’s estate trust payments. We’re getting scared, heck we’ve been scared the whole time, but as no further means of employment or pay has shown itself we are more so. Also scared having a wife who is still a Canadian citizen. Plans are being made, but we have no idea whether we can pull them off.
• Majid
  • Eid
  • Atypical Doctor website
  • Audacity & audio editing
  • Shout out to Bill!
  • Mint is reliable shocker!
  • Ubuntu 25.04 ARM
  • NAS issues – worried about my documents
  • E2EE hunt
    • Mega not as secure?
    • Filen
    • pCloud/Icedrive – mounted storage
    • Is anything really E2EE?
    • Possible Law issues
    • Wheres Proton Drive?! – WebApp?
    • Cryptomater
  • Found a use for AI (Leo vs ChatGPT vs Co-Pilot)
  • Galaxy Buds 3 Pro
  • Back to Spotify (Apple Music is pants!)
  • Gangs of London
  • Criminal Record
  • Dr White

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Linux Innards

30 minutes (~5-8 minutes each)

•  Travel computing

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Bodhi Corner

[2-5 minutes]

• Bodhi Corner is a bit brief this episode. The devs are very busy and the rest of us don’t have a clue. We are interested in contributors to help with documentation and testing. Any skill you have is needed, if you have time to contribute. The team is currently made up of 2 devs: Robert Wiley, who works on the ISO, and Stefan, who works on themes and Moksha desktop, plus several people working on documentation, promotion, translations, or other things.
• For those of you willing to try Moksha without Bodhi, Robert Wiley (@ylee) has created a script which allows you to install Moksha on any Debian distro. This installs Moksha and EFL and other things but compiles the code with debug symbols. It is mainly published to assist those that are interested in dev work on Moksha. And makes it easy to use GDB on Moksha and do remote debugging and all that.
• A similar script will be created shortly for adding Moksha to any Ubuntu distro.
• As always, you are welcome to try any version of Bodhi, whether official or beta. Bodhi 8 Debian should be out in beta in a week or four. And please, visit our page at Distrowatch so we can rise back up into the top 50. We know it’s nearly meaningless, but our fragile egos could stand the boost.

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Vibrations from the Ether

20 minutes (~5 minutes each)

• vangogh
  • Hello All,

I’d like to throw my hat in the ring as a potential co-host.

Let me know about a possible meet and greet and see if we can get the process started.

Thanks,

— Play Check This Transition Bumper —

Check This Out

10 minutes

• https://nextcloud.com/encryption/

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!

Send us email at [email protected]

Join us live on Youtube

Post at the mintCast subreddit

Chat with us on Discord and Telegram

Or post directly at https://mintcast.org

• Next Episode – 2 pm US Central time on Sunday, April 27, 2025.
• Get mintCast converted to your time zone
• for 459 Next Roundtable Live Stream – 2 pm US Central time on Saturday, April 19, 2025.
• Get the Roundtable Live Stream converted to your time zone
• for 459.5 Next Roundtable Live Stream – 2 pm US Central time on Saturday, May 3, 2025.
• Get the Roundtable Live Stream converted to your time zone
• 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 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!>

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