mintCast 346 – It’s Not You, It’s Me (mp3)

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BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

• Leo
  • The Chromium based browsers have fixed the AMD/Graphical issue that was plaguing me. Waiting for a new beta update from the Linux Mint Chromium package to test that. But so far, Linux Mint’s Chromium is stable, but still has the issue. Can’t remember if it was Dan or Joe from Linux User Space that said resizing the windows fixes it. It does!
  • Web Apps is my new favorite thing. I use it with Plex and Nextcloud mostly with the Linux Mint Chromium.
  • World of Warcraft crashes on launch from Lutris. Sad times.
• Moss
  • I have the FuzZ400 about as good as it’s going to be, still need to hit F1 during all boots. This makes it hard to reboot from my recliner, as the F1 key on the wireless mini keyboard does not function. (Note: buy new wireless keyboard with real F-keys when possible.) 
  • I installed the power supply on my mini desktop. It works again. I put my old 2 Tb spinning metal drive in it. All the partitions were there, I thought I had 4 installations on it… but only the Mint partition had a distro in it, and the swap partition had been added to the partition which followed where it was. I reestablished the swap partition, and installed an OEM of Mint 20 Cinnamon on it. I’m looking for a local student to give it to. I have a monitor for it, but I haven’t looked to see if I have a working spare keyboard or mouse.
  • On Tuesday the 13th, I went looking for a Telegram group about Bodhi Linux, and didn’t find any in English so I set up one — with help, as I’ve never done this before. I posted it to all my Linux groups and also to both Bodhi Forums and my LQ blog. We have 20 members now, including lead dev Robert Wiley (aka YLee).
  • I had a great conversation with YLee in the group yesterday, lots of new stuff, including that there is a pre-alpha release now of Bodhi 6.0, available both with Moksha and E24. There is no 6.0 repo yet, but YLee stated that some programs from the 5.1 repo MAY work, such as the bodhi-printing app, no guarantees. I’m a Bodhi-loving fool, I currently have 3 installations on my laptop – 5.1, 6.0 with Moksha and 6.0 with Enlightenment E24.
  • Moksha development has far surpassed E17 levels, and has included most of the improvements through E24; however, unlike the main Enlightenment line, YLee accomplished this without changing the stable E17 codebase. 
  • The Bodhi team is mostly just 2 devs now, so please volunteer if you can help. Donations are up and down as well. [$50 this month, $300 last month]
  • In employment news, I still have not gotten paid by Census 2020, but discovered that was my fault. I fixed it, but I could be waiting another 3-4 weeks to receive my paycheck. I have been hired as a substitute teacher by the local school district, but the past two weeks were Fall Break so no work. I interviewed for an actual computer repair position, but was not called back for the second round. 
  • We’re getting near the end of Dead Beat, the 7th book in the Dresden Files series.
• Joe
  • The GK61S Bluetooth keyboard.  I still think that changing out the battery might be my best bet for maintaining bluetooth connection but overall I am disappointed.  I do like the buttons and the size is useful but having to use it wired is a bit annoying and I don’t know if replacing the battery will actually fix all the issues since it sometimes has a problem staying connected over bluetooth even with external power.  It can work with just the USB-C cable but wire can get in the way.  
    • I had previously thought that most of the Bluetooth connection issues with Linux had been solved but now I am going to need to look into it a bit more
    • Mostly bluetooth seems to suck on the desktop
  • Having fun with the Repetier snap and my 3D printer.  Had to do a lot of fixing and refixing to get it printing again but it is good to go for now.  Still having some problems with ABS even with the enclosure but I am switching back to pla and petg for now.  I did have to build a couple of dry boxes for the filament rolls and hopefully that will help.  Petg is printing pretty good right now.
  • Still figuring out what i want to do with that Lenovo Flex 4.  It is currently running Repetier and hooked up to my printer.  I think I am going to do a bit more conversion of the space that it is in and see if I can make a mini studio.
    • Used it to do the linux lugcast since we are using Jitsi amongst ourselves
      • Used Droidcam for this.  I think i got better resolution over wifi than i did over USB
    • Waiting on a mic stand to come in and will be using it along with the HyperX Quadcast mic it actually came in today but i have not opened it yet
    • Thinking about getting a green screen and seeing how well it works since you can get them for around 20 dollars
  • Finally made the upgrade on my main laptop to Mint 20 following the upgrade path, really nice to not have to jump through all the hoops to get the graphics card working properly.  
    • Reinstalled both Docker and Resilio Sync and all my scripting seems to be working fine
  • I had to install the flatpak for mumble on all my machines.  I guess the most recent update messed with the certificates.  Great to find out as the show is starting
• Josh Hawk
  • Mic Mayhem! I have been dealing with trying to get good audio out of my mic. I have a Blue Snowball USB Condenser mic right now and for some reason the audio is good sometimes and sounds hollow others. I have tried messing with the software sound settings but nothing seems to help. I just have to turn it on and hope my recording sounds good this time haha 😅.
  • In other news this led me to buy a new dynamic mic! After looking at a ton of reviews I finally decided on believe it or not an Amazon Basics Mic 😱. I found it on eBay for 16$ but I didn’t have an audio interface so it came with a XLR to ¼” audio jack. I plugged it into my Creative Sound Blaster Z sound card and presto my voice sounded much better but alas it was not to be. There was a rhythmic buzzing that I later found out was coming from my sound card 😭. All that to say I am back using my Blue Snowball and am waiting for a new XLR to USB cable that will fix the buzzing issue.
  • One more quick thing. I have finally installed openSUSE on my parents old Gateway PC and am in the process of setting it up. I tried to use the transactional server install and realized that zypper does not work on that so I reinstalled the normal server version.
• Bo
  • Gnome experiment
    • Fedora 32 getting stuck on boot (gnome display manager)
      • Attempts to repair grub failed
    • Ubuntu was cool but I feel like it’s not close to “stock” gnome
    • Pop!_OS
      • Great! Love the window tiling feature and how it’s implemented
    • Gnome: it’s not you, it’s me…
  • Still playing card games on tabletop simulator (tts). Yesterday I taught my sister to play Magic.
  • LOTR the card game had an online convention using tts and Discord.
  • Baldur’s Gate 3 – Will it Proton?

THE NEWS:

• Wine 5.19 Out
• System76 Lets Tiling Windows Stack
• Kernel 5.9 Out
• Plasma 5.20 Is a Huge Release
• Happy Birthday KDE!

SECURITY UPDATE: 

• Google, Intel Warn of IoT Kernel Bug

• • • Three flaws in BlueZ, the Bluetooth controller software in the kernel, could lead to code execution, denial of service and a way to map memory for later exfiltration!
    • Updating to kernel 5.9 seems to be the fix, which is easy enough. This bit is incorrect. Intel made a statement. No fix is available.
    • Ubuntu hasn’t backported the fixes to kernel 5.8 as of yet, but surely it’ll show up soon.

• Zoom rolls out E2E Encryption for EVERYONE

• • Zoom has had a wild history with encryption in the past few months. Things like encryption that wasn’t full encryption, encryption for everyone wasn’t really for everyone, and the ability for internal employees were able to log into supposedly encrypted sessions defeating the entire purpose of encryption.
  • In a four phase approach Zoom is finally rolling out end to end encryption. For now, during phase one, it’ll be opt in only. It’s essentially a beta test.
  • The second phase will roll out in 2021.

Announcements:

• Our next episode will be Sunday, November 1, 2020 at 2 pm US Central Standard Time, 8 pm UTC. Check when this will be in your local timezone at https://everytimezone.com/s/7d8c1119.
• Note both the US and UK will have time changes (“fall back” 1 hour) between mintCasts 346 & 347, so those times remain the same, but this makes the UTC time 1 hour later than before.

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, linuxuserspace.show 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 Lowe for all his work on the website
• Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
• Archive.org for hosting our audio files
• HPR for our Mumble backup
• Hobstar for our logo
• Londoner for our time zone link
• Owen Peery for our audio editing
• Archive.org for hosting our audio files
• The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>

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