January 29, 2020News, OGG, Podcast

mintCast 327 – The Mozilla Thrilla

First up, in our Wanderings, I follow in Tony H’s footsteps and paint, Tony H upgrades a laptop and attends another LUG, Josh returns, Moss meets a mintCast listener, Joe listens to more books and learns about Cockpit, and Tony Watts edits video and works on his Studio.

Then in our news a new Wine, GParted, Edge and Yaru theme for Ubuntu. The Pinephone ships and Firefox runs into issues.

Finally, in security, we talk password leads and Mozilla addon bans.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

Leo
- DnD Mini painting! D:
Tony H
- Upgraded a Windows 8.1 Sony VAIO i5 laptop to Windows 10 and after the upgrade replaced the spinner with a 120Gig SSD and upgraded the RAM from 4 to 6Gb and this now boots in under 10 seconds. Even I was impressed with the performance improvements, I’m sure part of the issue was that over time the Win8 install had built up a load of windows bloat which slowed it down, but the person who asked me to do this will be very happy to have a workable laptop back. Listening to the first part of the HPR new years eve/day marathon event which was released this week, if you want to know what me and Popey talked about, have a listen.
- Went to the LUG and talking to a new member who has just moved to the area and we seem to have trod a similar path with Linux, starting with Ubuntu and migrating to Mint with the advent of the Unity DE. Good to see new people coming to the LUG.
- Oh and this week at the LUG I got given some sourdough starter which I have christened ‘Fred’ well it is a living organism lol. So this week sometime I will be trying to bake a sourdough loaf, may have to do a little YouTube research beforehand to make sure I’m doing it right. I’ve made many loaves before but this will be the first time making sourdough. Wish me luck.
- And I can’t forget the Matchbox cars, had a lucky flea-Bay find and picked up some very nice models that can go straight into the collection for around a £1 each. I’m sure I can get a lot more than that if I ever want to part with them, but for now they will be staying put. Considering having a stall at the next swap meet, to try and move on some of my many repeats either sell or swap.
Moss
- So I missed the Thinkpad Lovefest last episode. I had a great time at GAFilk (as I always do, which is why I keep going year upon year), but the resultant video did not sound great. I’m waiting for better audio to patch in, foretelling my first go with KDEnlive.
- At least you didn’t decide to replace me permanently with Alan Pope. My first Thinkpad was purchased only 5 or 6 years ago, a X130e, which later I replaced with a T430 and sent the X130e to my fiancee (now wife). After about a year, she decided she wanted a T430, so we sold the X130e and bought her one. She still has hers; I just sold mine to listener Dale Miracle at a price which was definitely to my benefit, and we got dinner along with it. Thanks, Dale!
- I’ve been playing Musical Distros on my machines, and somehow managed to have Mint Cinnamon and KDE neon on both computers. I need to find some more distros to play with. I looked at Nitrux but it doesn’t look like you actually install it.
- The problem I was having with Feren OS on my Galago Pro 2, which to date has only shown itself when using only with Kmines and KMahjongg, was not a Feren problem, it was something between the Galago video system and KDE. I had the same issue with KDE neon. And while the blocks of video dropout are white in regular mode, they are dark grey in Dark Mode, which is really something. I haven’t tried Kubuntu to further investigate, but the Galago Pro was reported to have been pretty well-used when listener Jackie Moore sent it to me so it could just be wear.
- To the people in our Telegram group who seem to think I have the record for the most distros on a machine: one of my MeWe friends has 11. And I have done the math: if I allocated a generous 25 Gb for each distro, I could easily fit 50 distros on my Galago Pro 2; however, thinking about having to update all those distros, not to mention navigating the GRUB menu. I think I’ll stick with 7.
- I’m trying to talk Tony into doing Peppermint 10 Respin for Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 010 on February 5th. I tried it and was driven bonkers by the peppermint candy icon in the taskbar. I hate doing negative reviews, especially for good distros, so I’ll get Tony to do a positive one, if he’s up for it. I believe I’ll do Feren OS again, it’s a whole new distro with KDE and what he has done is simply amazing. Our episode download numbers keep increasing, with currently 2 episodes over 500 downloads and 3 more over 400 out of 9 episodes. For as niche-y as we are, those are nice numbers.
- I replaced Ubuntu Budgie 19.10 with Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix, because that’s what we’re doing this episode. I have no need for two versions of Ubuntu 19.10, but I will miss Budgie.
- My wife and I have finished reading Storm Front and got a $1.99 deal on Fool Moon (Dresden Files series), so I’m reading that to my wife now. Apparently these books are not in Kindle Unlimited — which beggars the use of the word “unlimited”, but there you have it. Our flying the skies with Temeraire continues to be on hold.
- The Rehab facility sent my mom home again just yesterday. Hope she can stay there.
Josh
- Back from Australia
- Problems with Grandad’s PC (He needs a new one)
- Editing photos
- EduBlocks draggable video tutorials
- Much less of me on the show due to exams in 14 weeks
Joe
- Listened to some good books
- NOS4A2 by Joe Hill who is the son of Stephen King
  - Really good book
  - You can tell that it was heavily influenced by King
  - Lots of references to Kings works
  - Very detailed but still easy to follow.
  - Highly recommend and I will be trying a few more books from the same author. Maybe find out if he has written any series
- Listened to the Avalon Chronicles which are a continuation of the Hellequin novels
  - Well read but complex enough that for the first read through I needed to drop the speed from 3x to 2x
  - I like the following of new characters while still having the cameos from the previous series to tie it all together.
  - Book 2 and 3 jumped around a lot
- Started the Lost Fleet series so I could get the beginning of the story.
  - Really having read the second series of this I am having trouble getting through because it is so similar that I feel like I have already read it.
  - Don’t know if I will finish the series any time soon but I will keep it in my library
- Listening to the Daniel Faust novels again
- Was hoping to listen to the Demon Squad novels but my copy is gone and I have not found a new one yet
- Also Yancy Lazarous novels but I was able to find another copy. So it will be next on my list
- Started using voice aloud reader which was recommended to me by one of my co-hosts on the linux lug cast.
  - I have never before liked text-aloud books, but using one of the online voice reader options it has worked out very well.
  - So far I have read the 6th book from the Garrett P.I. novels and the first book of the Aubry Knight trilogy
    - Both series are available as ebooks but not audiobooks
    - Both are very good books that I always wanted to get in audio
    - It is not perfect but it is much better than it was 10 years ago
- Haven’t done much with PI’s in a while and all I have left at this time is some Pi 1’s and a couple of zero w’s
  - For a warm up I plan on setting up a zero w as a pi hole
    - Used raspbian lite
  - I would like to order a Pi 4 and I will get around to it
  - Also looking hard at some physical switches on the GPIO to run scripts
  - But I may just use a usb numpad to start off with.
  - Also looking at 7 inch hdmi touch screens for the pi’s
- Thanks Popey for coming on the show last time. Also thanks for the suggestion on cockpit
  - It helped me easily diagnose the problems on my server. Yes it all could have been found elsewhere but this tool made it easy with everything consolidated. I was also able to use the interface to find the issue while I was several miles away at the office.
  - Turns out one of my 4tb hdds has some bad sectors. Sadly it is the partition that has all my configurations for docker and all my audiobooks.
  - Which explains the corrupt audiobook files that I have been seeing.
  - Ordered an 8tb to replace it.
- 8Tb HDD was really easy to set up. Didn’t have to jump through all the large hard drive hoops that I used to have to.
  - Setup in disks and then use rsync to copy everything over 24 hours to copy 4tb of data. Power down and power back up to make sure the data is still there and the partition is accessible.
  - Use disks again to change the mount name to what the old drive was(one of them the one for docker) and change the mount point on the old drive
  - Restart the machine and make sure that docker is working then point plex to the new drive location.
  - Do a full shutdown with no power for a few minutes
    - Yes I’m paranoid
  - It is all working. I now feel comfortable taking the 4Tb out Although I may wait a few days before doing anything with it.
- Installed android x86 on the 7140 which may spend some time as my testing machine
  - I did not want to wipe out my hard drive so I attempted to install it to a USB stick
  - I think my powered usb hub or the cable to it was simply not up to the task
  - So I wiped my drive and ran it there.
  - It was nice being able to play some of the android games on full screen and install all the apps that I usually use on my phone
  - But the sound did not work on either the speakers or the 3.5mm jack but did work over bluetooth so kinda usable
  - The only issue I had was recovering when it attempted to sleep since the 7140 does not support that. The touchpad and wifi would both stop working although I could fix the wifi I could not fix the touchpad without a full restart
- So I wiped the drive again and attempted to install ubuntu cinnamon. Invalid partition table every time.
  - Will talk about that in the innards but I did get it fixed
- Also am attempting to install android x86 in virtualbox on my 7130
  - Need to increase the resources for it but it does seem to be working
- May have to buy a larger/faster drive for the 7140
- Dell Venue 8 Pro woes
  - Spent a couple of days trying to get that set back up
  - Couldn’t install anything with cinnamon
  - Ended up install Mint Mate to replace mint xfce
  - Tried all the old audio fixes and could not get the audio working
  - Surprisingly though the Bluetooth is now working
- Copyq from the going linux podcast
Tony W
- More progress on digitizing 8mm video
  - Located all of the cables for camcorder
  - VLC did capture both audio and video streams, after selecting video camera as source (vs analog TV as used previously per instruction in a reddit or something)
  - Resulting video files from VLC capture are HUGE. Uncompressed AVI format
  - Essentially the process is to capture audio/video, then convert the raw uncompressed files to MP4 etc (I will use Handbrake for this)
- I will be doing some work on my home studio in the basement very soon
  - Drywall and insulation, framing around ducts and pipes, carpet…
  - Need permit from county
  - Planning to host band practice at my house for yet another band project
- Have been enjoying some of the basic features of Plex I had somehow managed to avoid to this point
  - Bought the android app
  - Casting to chromecasts in the house
  - Added user accts for the kids – gives control over BOTH libraries and ratings restriction

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

Our Next Episode will be live Feb 9, 2020. 2PM CST, 8PM UTC

Wrap-up:

Joe – www.Tllts.org linuxlugcast.com MeWe [email protected]
Bo – undercastnetwork.com

Moss – Triad Bardic College, Peaceful Hippo, MeWe, music on Bandcamp and Moss Bliss’ YouTube channel or Robert Warren’s channel, I should have my ReverbNation site back soon, [email protected], [email protected], Sponsus (Now with Tiers, and a Donate Button!)!

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 you can get your five minute news digest at Full Circle Weekly News

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

Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
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!)