mintCast 242 – Void Linux
242]
News:
- More news on the Linux Mint hack…
- Clem speaks on the hack (blog.linuxmint.com)
- Changes to password policies (blog.linuxmint.com)
- Announcing SQL Server on Linux (microsoft.com) (linuxinsider.com)
- ProtonMail’s Encrypted Email Service Exits Beta, Adds iOS, Android Apps (protonmail.com) (techcrunch.com)
- How To: Install/Upgrade to Linux Kernel 4.4.5 in Ubuntu/Linux Mint Systems (yourownlinux.com)
Main Topic: Void Linux (http://www.voidlinux.eu/)
“Void Linux is an independent distribution, developed entirely by volunteers. Unlike trillions of other existing distros, Void is not a modification of an existing distribution. Void’s package manager and build system have been written from scratch.”
- Troubleshooters.Com Linux Library (http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/)
- Using Void Linux (http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/void/voidtips.htm)
- Developed by Juan RP (https://github.com/xtraeme).
- 10 contributors listed on GitHub (https://github.com/voidlinux)
- Void Linux Wiki (https://wiki.voidlinux.eu/)
- XBPS (https://wiki.voidlinux.eu/XBPS)
Tips & Websites:
- Void Linux (http://www.voidlinux.eu/)
- Sublime Text (https://www.sublimetext.com/) – I’ve been having to use Windows at bit more at work recently and one of things that Windows has that Linux doesn’t is Notepad++. This is also one of the first things I went looking for when I first started using Linux over Windows and was a little heartbroken to see that I couldn’t use Notepad++ on Linux. Then I found Sublime Text.
Note: Sublime Text may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however a license must be purchased for continued use. There is currently no enforced time limit for the evaluation.
- How To Fix The (Annoying) ‘Failed to Fetch’ Chrome apt Error (reddit.com) (omgubuntu.co.uk) The search engine has pulled 32-bit Chrome builds from the official Chrome repo, which gets added to Ubuntu Software Sources when the app is first installed. On Linux Mint, you can update it in Update Manager: Edit > Software Sources > Additional repositories, Select Google -> Edit URL…
- Record your terminal activity with “script” (ostechnix.com) As a System administrator, you might execute lot of commands in the Terminal everyday. Sometimes you might want to refer the entire command history along with all respective outputs later.
Pre-Show Music:
- “Yesterday’s Conversation” by Angus Wallace
- “The Red Stone” by Ground & Leaves
Podcast Announcements:
- FOSS TALK LIVE 2016 – August 6, 2016, London, UK
- Texas Linux Fest 2016 – July 8-9, 2016, Austin Convention Center, Austin, TX
- Events at the Linux Foundation
More Information:
Hosts: Rob, Scott, Joe and Isaac
Live Stream every other Sunday 2:00 p.m.(Central): mintcast.org/livestream
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Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). Podcast bumpers provided by Oscar.
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Hello! If you are looking for encrypted email have a look a tutanota.com – they didn’t raise any money from croud funding, offer a free account, are based in Europe (Germany) – strict privacy policy. With Protonmail there are some concerns with the financing – recently they suffered an attack and reading the various comments about their next fund raising made a few lights started to blink – they have raised so much money and it was still not enough – this is where the contrast for tutanota is. Also the pricing for tutanota is slick – 1 Euro per month and you can have your own domain. This year we will have two factor aunthentication and many more tools. I use both – Protonmail and Tutanota and I’m not ready to pick one of them as my daily driver but I’m starting to push towards tutanota.
Thanks for this idea! I signed up for a new account at tutanota, and I’m going to check it out. My first impression of the website is very positive.
Here are some more for you to test in spare time:
https://www.privacytools.io/#email
If you like Sublime Text, you’ll probably love the Atom editor. It uses the MIT License, it’s got all the features of Sublime, and it’s insanely customizeable.
You are completely correct Claire and thanks bringing it up! I have used Atom before and really like it. I tried using it as an IDE, but had it a bit of growing pains in that department, but I still really like it.
https://jitsi.org
Rob, try this as a Skype replacement.
I just found this! I’ll give it a try and let you know how it works.
One way to make sure your ISOs are always fine is by downloading them with ‘wget -c …’ because you can clearly see if you are connecting to the mirror you specified.
Always check the md5sum, it takes seconds and can save you hours of headache. 😉
If the md5sum does not match, just get the torrent and save where you downloaded your ISO. The torrent program will break your file in many small parts and only download the corrupted ones, saving you gigabytes of download with a few megabytes. Then you check the md5sum again.
I don’t think any single one of these announcements from Microsoft about Ubuntu fulfills Rob’s prediction of a partnership but the aggregate effect of them is starting to add up. So far we have Ubuntu in Azure, SQL server for Linux and now Ubuntu for Windows:
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/03/ubuntu-on-windows.html?m=1
Other feedback:
From your review of Void, I didn’t take away any reasons why I would want to look at it other than as a curiosity. Quickly looking at its website, I see that it uses LibreSSL instead of OpenSSL and uses runit instead of systemd. Both of those choices are pretty uncommon amongst Linux distros now.
Protonmail does seem like a step up from major email providers in terms of security. One point that I always see brought up by security experts is that a service like Protonmail should not be trusted if you are concerned about targeted (not mass) government surveillance. Because Protonmail is web-based, the cryptography code is delivered as javascript each time you visit the site and there is the potential for Protonmail to be compelled to change the code to log passwords or for a sophisticated attacker to spoof the site (hard to do with https but government entities like the NSA potentially have zero day exploits for OpenSSL or other tricks). Most people don’t need to worry about this kind of thing but it’s perhaps worth keeping mind.
Another text editor worth recommending (especially if you like Notepad++): Notepadqq
It describes itself as a “Notepad++-like editor for the Linux desktop”, and has excellent features like tabbed editing, versatile search-and-replace options, and context highlighting. I switched to it after using Leafpad for a while (which, in turn, I switched to after using Gedit), and it really is very similar to Notepad++.
Happy April Fools Day!
Back to the Serious, some notes on this podcast:
– Microsoft has been buying vertical market applications recently, another monopoly frontier for them to dominate. Many of these apps require SQL Server, so a lower cost platform like Linux is a logical move. Given some decent o/s alternatives I wouldn’t start from scratch using S/S.
– May have mentioned it before, but Why the whining about checking SHA signatures for an ISO? Just install gtkhash and one right click away in your file manager gets it done!
– Also not sure about the kernel upgrade push. On desktop systems I’ve never needed the latest and greatest for full operation, YMMV on laptop hardware. I check security issues periodically but have never found a relevant one, so I usually stay with the Mint recommendation.
– The Mint website is weak on proactive security education – paranoid users of the Main editions should check the upstream page regularly: http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/
– Your exploration of Void Linux reminds me of my recent revisit of PCLinuxOS, a (mysteriously) highly regarded distro. Like many distros, I immediately noticed the lack of packages compared to the good ‘ol Debian / Ubuntu / Mint universe. Just noticed that Mint has added Google Earth to its repo, one less thing to download!