October 30, 2019News, OGG, Podcast

mintCast 320.5 – Why So Minty?

This is the new group’s official 1 year anniversary (apart from Josh :D).

In our Innards section, we talk about what makes Linux Mint so Minty.

And finally, community feedback.

LINUX INNARDS:

Mint Applications
- Welcome (mintwelcome)
  - A screen that most people only see once (because most of us click the box to make it not appear ever again).
  - Walks new users through the steps they should take to get their system up and running.
  - First Steps include setting up Timeshift, managing proprietary drivers, updating, choosing your desktop layout (Win XP vs 7 styles), configuring system settings, installing software and turning on the Firewall (ufw).
- USB Formatter, USB Image Writer (mintstick)
- Backup Tool (mintbackup) – Joe
  - A utility to backup home directories as well as installed software as long as software was installed with Software Manager (mintinstall).
- Driver Manager (mintdrivers)
  - A standalone tool taken from Ubuntu with extra bits stripped out.
  - Finds proprietary drivers like Nvidia Graphics.
- Software Manager (mintinstall)
  - Provides a frontend to install applications from either the Ubuntu and Mint repositories and Flathub.
- System Reports (mintreport)
  - Currently has three main features.
    - System Information via inxi
    - Crash Reports with the ability to create a bug report and upload stack traces to pastebin to share.
    - The newer Information reports give you system health information and recommendations. For example, it reminds you to configure Timeshift, install multimedia codecs and upgrade your system.
- Update Manager (mintupdate)
  - Provides an easy interface to install system updates. All updates are selected by default and require only a press of the “Install Updates” button to get everything updated
  - This is different to the previous way Mint took care of updates which categorized them in levels and, by default, only installs levels 1-3 out of 5.
  - Allows automation
    - Automatic Updates are as easy as turning on the option in Edit > Preferences > Automation.
    - Same with Automatic cleanup, similar to running apt autoclean and autoremove.
  - Provides the ability to change kernels easily
    - View > Linux Kernels
  - Provides a view of your update history
- Nanny (mintnanny)
  - Allows blocking of domains, originally targeted at parents.
  - Underneath, it edits /etc/hosts to accomplish this.
- Upload (mintupload)
  - A one-way tool to push files to a service you’ve set up in the app by dragging and dropping files or directories onto a window on the desktop.
  - Supports SCP, SFTP and FTP by default.
- Text Editor (xed)
- Pix
  - Image Browser, Viewer, Organizer, Editor
  - It’s the default viewer in Mint and will open up the major filetypes (jpeg, gif, png, tiff and a few others)
- Timeshift (a fork of teejee2008/timeshift)
  - A system backup tool using rsync or BTRFS meant to work as a repair utility in case system changes cause any kind of failure.
  - Can be used to do an entire system backup including user files.

(Can you restore a system on a different, similar machine using Timeshift? Install Mint, run Timeshift and install a previously saved install?)

CinnamonDesktop and Features
- Applets – The icons and features on the taskbar.
  - Calendar (clock, date)
  - Grouped Window List
  - Network Manager
  - Notifications
- Desklets – Small programs that run on the desktop
  - Digital photo frame
  - Launchers
  - Clocks
- Extensions – Provides ways to modify the look and feel of your desktop
  - Transparent Panels
  - Watermark
  - Wobbly Windows
  - Desktop Cube
  - Window opacity
- Windows – Allows window customization
  - Title bar button placement
  - Actions when clicking buttons
  - Mouse behavior
  - Alt-Tab behavior
File managers (Tony W)
- Nemo vs Caja vs Thunar
  - Nemo
    - Nemo is a fork of Nautilus
    - Retained some features of Nautilus 3.4 that were dropped in Nautilus 3.6
      - Desktop icons
      - Compact view
      - Dual pane
    - Nemo features vs Nautilus
      - Detailed comparison at slant.co
  - Nemo features
    - Supports networking – Samba, SSH
    - Open as root
    - Open in terminal
    - Show operation progress when moving files
    - Bookmark management
    - Dual panel (View/extra pane
    - Lacks some features present in other file managers, bulk file renaming, etc

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

Brad Alexander
Legato by Spigen.

Used Nokia N900s on ebay

From Telegram

Peter Jones
- https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/09/useful-ubuntu-keyboard-shortcuts/amp
Londoner
- https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/grub-entries.html
A conversation about google services.(Google Graveyard website)

From Discord

A conversation about OpenVPN and its security with BlackDexter.

CHECK THIS OUT!

Leo – CPU-X (a CPU-Z Linux alternative)
Moss
- It’s Foss points out two options for upgrading your Chromebook from ChromeOS: GalliumOS for a true Linux experience and NayuOS for a Google-free Chrome alternative.
- Interview on the inside story on Purism with Zlatan Tudoric
- More Purism: About their partnership with Halo Privacy
Tony W – command line utility ‘ink’

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

November 3rd, 2019. 2PM Central US, 3PM Eastern US, 8PM UTC

WRAP-UP:

Joe – www.Tllts.org www.linuxlugcast.com MeWe [email protected]
Bo – undercastnetwork.com
Moss – Triad Bardic College, Peaceful Hippo, MeWe, music on Bandcamp and all over YouTube (search for Moss Bliss, ignore the young black South African gospel singer), [email protected], [email protected]
Tony Hughes – HPR – http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=338
- Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/
- Twitter @TonyH1212, [email protected] [email protected]

Tony Watts – [email protected], Echoes of Savages (band)
Josh – [email protected], [email protected], edublocks.org and @all_about_code on Twitter
Leo – leochavez.org and @leochavez on Twitter, and Full Circle Weekly News

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
Archive.org for hosting our audio files
The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>