Category Archives: News

mintCast 297 PI in the sky – Edited

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Bi-Weekly Wanderings:
Leo
Played with OSMC at Tony Hughes’ recommendation.
Digging through Snap, Flatpak and AppImages

Tony W
Purchases: SSDs,Google home mini + chromecast, chromecast audio, random stuff for the pi
Played with pi zero with limited success (more on that later)
Richard Thompson concert

Joe
Started playing Skyrim again along with purchasing Fallout 4. Tried to get them to play under linux but severe audio and lockup issues. More tinkering required
Trying out Cairo toolbar in mint

Tony H
For the first time I’ve been playing with OBS to record my screen so I can make video tutorials of how to use some of the software I use, this came out of a request by one of the hosts to run through using VirtualBox in Linux, so I had a go. As a first attempt it was not perfect but I got to play with a new piece of software.

I’ve also been continuing to play with the Raspberry Pi 3B and run Ubuntu Maté had a problem with Firefox stopping to work, so I had to install Chromium which works fine, still trying to figure the Firefox issue.

I ordered and received a new mic boom and pop filter and set that up, not sure how much difference it will make to my audio recording quality but every little helps. I’m also playing with Audacity to improve my Audio editing skills for the show, again time will tell how good this turns out. I had a long chat with Joe Ressington about processing the show audio to get the best quality we can achieve.

Installed Mint 19 on a spare Dell E6220 i5 with 4Gig Ram, 25 minutes for the whole process including swapping out the SSD to preserve the Win10 install and updating the system.

Moss
Minty Fresh! I added LMDE 3 to sda4 and LM 19 Cinnamon to sda6. No more Ubuntu on the laptop, just a backup partition (sda5) of KDE neon 18.04. (Also a couple drops of peppermint oil in my coffee!)
Lots of little purchases to make the Pi work. Almost done. Waiting for USB WiFi dongle. Got USB extension cable for my keyboard, 32Gb USB key, 7-port powered USB hub. I have put BerryBoot on the SD card, not turned it on since.
Still trying to get an orange cover for my Fire tablet; got the wrong one, right one should show up in a week. Wife claimed the one with the blue cover, had to buy another Fire for me and then get another for my even-poorer-than-me cousin. Working with Nova launcher, checked out a few other launchers and didn’t like them as much..

The News:
Bo – Krita launches ask.krita.org
Community can ask questions, answers provided by staff and community members.

Bo – Nvidia 410 and 415 driver updates could break Vulcan, Link to fix issue
“library_path”: “libGLX_nvidia.so.0”
Tested on my system and did not have this issue.

The big news Ubuntu 18.04 will be supported for ten years.
https://itsfoss.com/ubuntu-18-04-ten-year-support/
Tony H – Fedora 27 End of Life

In Linux related news, systemd has introduced a new feature [https://itsfoss.com/systemd-features/] to help in case of boot failures.

Finnish company Nekuno working on Linux phone running Plasma Mobile https://www.zdnet.com/article/first-truly-open-source-smartphone-necuno-unveils-its-kde-on-linux-handset/

Linux Innards:
Tony W: Pi Zero with Berryboot (Raspbian, OpenElec etc) and Retropie card.
Used berryboot built in options to install Raspbian (very slow on the zero) and Openelec
Used Etcher to make retropie SD
Etcher was an app image
Struggled with controller detection (wired PS2, XBox One, old MS Sidewinder, arcade controls)
Worked with keyboard
Bluetooth controls are supported for XBox One, Wiimotes. Requires some config
Bo: Pi 3 icecast2 streaming server/client
Liquidsoup + icecast2 = server side audio playback
Icecast2 install on DO + pi3 relay icecast server
Leo:
Flatpak, why the big size?
Used OSMC on a Pi B+ and a Pi 2 B+. Obviously the Pi 2 was better, but Pi 1 was quite usable.z
Joe:
Got a new Microphone: Blue Snowball
PI stuff
Mopidy JukeBox build rework
External drive
SD filling up
Attempting to install alexa pi
Berryboot build of wonder
BB build using 32gb usb3.o
Got it setup with openelec and retropie as well as raspbian and ubuntu server
Retropie woes
BB build using 120gb external
Still in process

Moss – I got nuthin’. Waiting for the wifi dongle. Got BerryBoot on SD, haven’t run it yet.

Announcements:

Ep 298 on December 16th at 2PM US/Central

mintCast 296 VPN and PI

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Bi-Weekly Wanderings:
Leo Setting up PiVPN and Pi-Hole on Pi’s and migrating them to a full Ubuntu VM. Testing out K/Ubuntu 18.10. Solus broke for me, gamingwise.

Tony H Using a USB sound card so I could use my headset with integrated microphone on my Toshiba z30 with only a combined audio jack, while on the road last week. Worked flawlessly during the mumble discussion

Playing with OSMC on raspberry pi and flashing up my Motorola lapdock
more on that later.

Tony W Tinkering with Plex, Kodi for Xbox One, bulk file renamer (built into Caja, Thunar). Procured a Pi Zero

Moss USB Sticks – color-coded distros for helpful installations
Continued playing with OpenMandriva 3.03, had a glitch in GRUB after kernel upgrade, fixed it. Tried Rosa, it locked stuff on my computer, had to install something else on that partition to fix it.I will wait for OM4 and install that.
I received a Raspberry Pi 1 with clear case from Joe. Also got a cover for my Fire tablet we talked about, another gift from the mintCast crew.
MeWe group
Plugged mintCast to friends
mintCast t-shirts? Hoodies? Stickers? Thoughts…

Bo Jack audio setup podcast studio
Linux servers never die

Joe More work on youtube-dl and sshfs
David Working on kidsbizclub.org

The News:
In Groundbreaking Decision, Feds Say Hacking DRM to Fix Your Electronics Is Legal

Motorola Supports Right to Repair with Hardware Repair Kits

Opera will block those annoying cookie dialog boxes on its Android app
Opera CEO: Sale To Chinese Consortium Wasn’t Our Decision article says $1.2B
Opera sold to Chinese company for $600M

Samsung project “Linux on Dex” enters Beta

Mark Shuttleworth says he’s not selling anytime soon

Sourcegraph: An Open-Source Source Code Search Engine

CPod: An Open Source, Cross-platform Podcast App

VPNs
What is a VPN?
Why do I need one?

PIA $6.95/mo, $39.95/12 mos, $69.95/24 mos – US Based
NordVPN $11.95/mo, $83.88/12 mos, $95.75/24 mos – Panama based
Mullvad 5 Eu per month, Paypal or Bitcoin. Period. – Sweden based (not good for Netflix, Hulu users)
ProtonVPN.com Free Limited, Basic $48/yr, Plus $96/yr, Visionary $288/yr (some discounts for ProtonMail users) – Switzerland based

ProtonVPN has account charges based on how much access you have. Free only gives you 1 device and 3 nations to connect to. It goes up from there. The others are full access, just length of term.
Some free options: https://www.techradar.com/vpn/the-best-free-vpn-services-of-2018

Apps, openVPN, or Wireguard?
Router VPN or Device-based?

Pi Projects
Leo – PiVPN for logging into my home network and tinkering with my various services (Plex, OpenMediaVault, Pi-Hole, etc.). Pi-Hole for removing ads around the web. uBlock origin for everything Pi-Hole misses.
Tony H – OSMC Box for playing all my ripped DVD’s and video from the net. Installed to both a Pi 2 which works very well, and to a Pi Zero W, which works well if a little slowly, I wouldn’t want to use the Zero W for streaming web video, say from YouTube, but just to play local media it works fine.
I also installed the Pi version of Ubuntu Maté which works well on a Raspberry Pi 3 but seriously struggles to set up correctly on the Pi2 although this was with my Lapdock and I need to investigate if this is the problem or if the Pi2 is just a little underpowered for Ubuntu, despite Raspbian working without a hitch.
Tony W: Saving this until next episode
Pi Zero Retropie, wiimote pairing.
Arcade cabinet
David
Joe
Mopidy
Berryboot
VPN docker
SSH port forwarding
HTTPS
Secure messaging
Bo
Daily Drawing bot
Moss (Got my Pi 11/13, waiting for SD card for OS)

Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ Released For $25
Finally! The Venerable RISC OS is Now Open Source

More Pi to come! OSMC,

mintCast 295 – Linux on Mobile

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Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

 

 

  • Tony H
  • I’ve been playing with Audacity, and putting some of the tutorial that Rob did after the last recording on editing the show audio, into practice.
  • I’ve installed and had a little play with LMDE in a VirtualBox machine. Despite the fact that most of the packages are several versions behind, (LibreOffice is still on the 5.2 branch) it looks like a very solid distribution.
  • I’ve been pulling a couple of very old laptops apart for the spares before whatever can not be reused goes off to the recycle centre, and I mean old, one of them was on DDR RAM modules
  • Tinkering with Lenovo X200 tablet with Mint 19 Mate.

 

  • Moss
    • I installed Ubuntu Studio 18.10, got tired of how XFCE works and put MATE on it. Happy now.
    • My wife had a problem with her Ubuntu MATE 16.04 installation. Easiest way to fix it was with LM19, so I did. Only hiccup was we found it she had never logged in to Firefox so she had to remember or recover her logins. I could have spent hours researching and correcting the issue, but felt she had been in 16.04 too long already, and it only took 3 hours to install LM19 and get it to look and work like she wanted. Had to teach her how to use Terminal to attach to Mullvad using Wireguard, but she’s seen me do it a lot already.
    • I downloaded the latest versions of OpenMandrivaLx 3.03 and Mageia 6. Mageia 6 refused to install, with a very clunky installation process.
    • Looking at OpenMandriva installation disk, the first few screens act like my laptop and tv are halves of the same monitor, and splits the selection boxes across them. This is wonky as they think the monitors are on opposite sides from where they actually are. After those early selection screens it goes to the laptop screen. Nothing in this world beats the Calamares Installer.| OpenMandriva can write to my printer without a driver download and with only a few mouse clicks. (Always a headache, solved by downloading a driver installer from Brother in Debian distros.) | But in the end, OpenMandriva refuses to install, because it says the partition I’m installing it to is already mounted and so is unwritable.  | I found that if I do a Manual Partition, I can mark the partition to be formatted, and this solves the problem. So I installed it. Then went to do updates. Over 1300 of them. Totally froze the KDE Discover installer. I tried it via terminal, and found that Terminal is affected by system timeouts (which I thought I’d shut off) and it messed up the whole disk. I did a complete reinstall and babysat the entire process, with much success and many good things, but do not recommend for new users due to these issues.

 

  • Leo
    • Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2. Bootloader seems like it’s locked or is just really good at ignoring me
    • Moving Plex from OpenMediaVault to its own VM. Trying out the snap.
    • Playing with my Yeti to get better audio quality.

 

  • Tony Watts
    • Lots of tinkering with Linux mobile OS, the Nexus 5 and LG Urbane smartwatch
    • Met somebody moderately famous playing acoustic “gig” at Mexican restaurant
  • Joe
    • Playing with Libresonic and Plex to change how i see my podcasts
    • Youtube-dl used for some that are only on youtube

 

The News:

 

  1. Leo – Linux Mint 19.1 released in time for Christmas

 

  1. Tony H –  Linus is Back in Charge of Linux

 

  1. Tony H – IBM is acquiring software company Red Hat for $34 billion
    1. Mark’s take on Ubuntu Blog

Moss has a pile of stuff on this, are we going to run on this for a bit or just leave it alone? (I’m cool with it either way – Moss)  Never got a decision on this

[Said Ton of Stuff:

 

It strikes me that a purchase of Red Hat by IBM makes perfect sense. It has long been said that no manager ever got fired for buying IBM; it can certainly also be said that no IT manager ever got fired for buying Red Hat.  I also note that Red Hat just recently bought Gluster, a cloud storage company.

 

Everyone keeps saying that Linux isn’t taking over the desktop because there’s no huge corporation pushing it. Is that about to change? And if so, will it still be FOSS?

 

Also, Bad Voltage hosts surmised that the end result is for Jim Whitehurst to take over as CEO of IBM and turn that struggling behemoth around. Apparently IBM has lost money 14 of the last 15 quarters, while Red Hat is growing apace, so they want to use this to turn IBM’s culture around.]

 

  1. Moss – Pine64 is (working on) making a smartphone running KDE plasma starting at $100 PinePhone https://itsfoss.com/pinebook-kde-smartphone/comment-page-2/

 

Linux Innards

 

Dell Venue Pro 8

 

mintCast 294 – Linux Gaming is Alive Again!

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Bi-weekly Wanderings:

  • Isaac
    • Worked on getting several Linux Mint tickets issues closed
    • Had a PR accepted for Linux Mint
    • Been playing with Visual Studio Code and Vue.js
    • Dumped Ting and started back with T-mobile
  • Rob
    • Getting DDO running under Steam on Linux
    • Got ncdu installed based on a listener’s suggestion…thanks!
    • Updated the Podcasting box from LMDE 2 to LMDE 3
  • Joe
    • Proton playing the Batman Arkham games
    • Paprefs setup and issues
    • Why would i want to
    • Linux Mint VM on Windows tablet
  • Tony W
    • Mint 19 recording/podcast machine build
    • KDE Neon in place update went smoothly
    • Flashed Lineage OS on a couple of devices, saw performance improvement on both over stock
  • Leo
    • Lutris and DXVK setup on Mint
    • Fiddling with LMDE and sore spots with Audacity
    • New audio hardware (boom arm, shock mount)
  • Moss
    • Fiddling with my partitions, grub repair
    • VPN issues
    • Rant on monthly costs, and why Mullvad
    • Temporary issues with Mullvad LOL

News:

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mintCast 293 – LMDE 3 and new hosts

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Bi-weekly Wanderings:

  • Isaac has been playing with Sonic Pi and working with the Raspberry Pi.
  • Rob has been working with Bash
    • alias dus=’f(){ du -h -d 1 “$@” | sort -h; unset -f f; }; f’

News:

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mintCast 292 – Mint and podcast news

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Bi-weekly Wanderings:

  • Isaac’s been trying to help out more with Linux Mint development.
  • Rob’s been a world traveler.

News:

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