mintCast 302 – New Users, Start Here

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

• Leo
  • Spending time deep diving into Mint and our upstream Ubuntu and Debian.
    • Time to update systemd, CVE-2018-16864, CVE-2018-16865, CVE-2018-16866
    • Update apt too, CVE-2019-3462
    • Been playing with Timeshift on a machine that has multiple disks and a dual boot
• Joe
  • Not a fan of Gnome 3 or Pinguy
    • No right Click
    • HiDPI was not useful and caused problems
    • Big no go, couldn’t install any other desktops
  • 3d Printer is down for the count until payday
    • Got the power terminal but when i removed the old one board was shot
  • Samson Meteor
• Tony Watts
  • Played with KDE Connect
• Bo
  • Ansible setup
  • Rtmp to icecast and rtmp forwarding server
    • Thanks to Jupiter Broadcasting GitHub
• Tony Hughes
  • Rebuilding my Linux install on my podcast box after the drive corrupted, I used the opportunity to install Mint 19.1 Mate as it had been running Ubuntu 18.04 Mate.
  • Editing Audio on my Toshiba Z30 (a 4th gen i5 with a 128 MSATA SSD and 8 Gig of RAM) and finding out it’s a very competent laptop and more than capable of standing in as an audio production box to edit show audio if needed.
  • Upgrading the above to 512Gb MSATA SSD and 16G of RAM and reinstall of 19.1 twice due to a password meltdown.
  • Baking more Bread, I made some Rye bread last week Yumm.
• Moss
  • Life hit me. I tried to drive my car through a flooded area last Thursday while out delivering pizza and got within 50 yards of dry ground before…nothing. The water was over my ankles in the car, I was in there about 45 minutes before help came. Had to get the car pushed out, then the car started but electronics are iffy… still trying to dry the car out. I think it’s going to be OK, but until it’s dry, who knows? I got my other car running finally and I’ve been able to continue working.  Meanwhile, my mother is in the hospital, multiple infections and a week of the wrong care in the wrong hospital. She’s almost 90 now…
  • Got Bodhi installed. Took a few tries due to missteps. Great desktop, extremely lightweight system, just have a few hurdles to leap. I was surprised that the minimalist version of Bodhi (740 Mb, full version is 1.4 Mb) did not even include CUPS.  Fixes/Issues (not all mentioned on the air):
    • Install button is in Applications -> Preferences
    • Do not use eepgrader, use Terminal for update/dist-upgrade (updates in upgrader hang after completion, leading you to believe they are still incomplete) (Yes, another upgrade tool which is broken, cf. KDE Discover)
      • sudo apt update
      • sudo apt dist-upgrade (or just upgrade or full-upgrade)
    • There is a conflict between esudo and policykit, causing several programs (including Grub Customizer and gDebi) to not run correctly . Fix is:
      • sudo apt install –reinstall policykit-1
      • sudo apt-get install policykit-1-gnome
      • sudo apt-mark hold esudo
    • Special work needed to get Display, uses ARandR instead of Displays
      • Fix is in:
        • Go into ARandR, set up the displays the way you like, and SAVE the file as default.sh
        • open HOME/.e/e/applications/startup/startupcommands with epad, and add the line
        • Code: /home/[username]/.screenlayout/default.sh
    • Still trying to get printer installed correctly, got some hunting for answers to do.]
  • I just couldn’t look at MX 18 any longer. Put Bodhi on that partition. Looking for a new distro to try on sda6, considering just going back to OM 3.03 or OpenSuse (Tumbleweed? LEAP?). I’ve asked for suggestions, haven’t gotten a good one yet (rejected Pinguy after Joe’s experience with it). (sda2=LM 19.1 MATE; sda4=Bodhi 5; sda5=Ubuntu Studio; sda6=?)

Linux Innards:

• Leo: Making a startup disk
  • USB with Rufus, windows.
  • USB with Etcher or xfburn optical disk
  • USB with various Linux tools?
    • Rescatux
    • USB Image Writer (already included)
• Tony W: Partitions
  • OPTIONAL: Preparing drives/partitions
    • Decide to keep original OS (Windows) in multi-boot (recommend defragging first) or delete it completely
      • Even if you don’t think you’ll use windows it may be handy to keep around for firmware updates, the occasional game
    • Suggestion: Create shared storage partition for use by multiple OS including Windows (NTFS, EXFAT)
    • Shrink Windows partition using Windows Disk Manager OR shrink Windows partition using GPartEd
    • Even if you think you will only run Linux, this step can be very helpful to update/replac
• Joe: Consider adding drives:
  • SSDs are cheap (link to Microcenter?)
  • If you install additional drives, use fastest drive (SSD preferred) for OS install and slower/spinning drives for storage
• Moss: Consider any other OS install, other Linux distros (I’ve got a little list)
  • Note: If you install more than one distro to a hard drive, the last distro you install will control GRUB bootloader, you may want to plan to install your favorite distro last or make sure the last distro installed can use Grub-Customizer.  Manually editing GRUB yourself is *not* recommended for newer users, but it can be done.
• Bo: Installing Linux Mint
  • Alongside other OS
    • Multiboot instructions
    • Linux Mint won’t need a lot of space, maybe 80GB
• Tony H: Tip: Consider installing a distro to a USB drive!

The News:

• Lutris 0.5 released
• Flowblade 2.0 released
• LinuxMint Monthly News
• NVIDIA overclock
• Tony H – No new pi this year That’s my prediction blown away
• Pine Tab wow $79  MINE LOL
• LibreOffice 6.2 released

Link to issue discussed:  https://www.hirensbootcd.org/

Check This Out:

• Tony H
  • OggCamp 19 a UK open culture event with a main track plus a Barcamp track for participants to give their own talks https://www.oggcamp.org/ This year’s Event will be in Manchester UK on the 19th and 20th October, venue still to be confirmed.

Announcements:

• Next episode will air at 2PM Central Time / 3 pm EST, 8 pm UTC on Sunday 24th February
• https://t.me/mintCast

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