Welcome to mintCast

the Podcast by the Linux Mint Community for All Users of Linux

This is Episode 436!

This is Episode 436.5!

Recorded on Sunday,

Playing with chainsaws im Joe, … Moss, … Bill, suckered in again, I’m Majid, …Eric …Alan

— Play Standard Intro —

• First up in the news: AlmaLinux restores some deprecated stuff, Nouveau dev joins the bigs, Linux runs cars, Microsoft sneaks MS-DOS 4.0 into their open source portfolio, Ubuntu 24.04 is out…. And you shouldn’t upgrade your system yet;
• In security and privacy: nope, nada;
• Then in our Wanderings: Joe preps for zombies, Bill migrates, Majid is starstruck, Moss is car swapping, Popey is job swapping.

• In our Innards section: We interview Alan Pope
• And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

— Play News Transition Bumper —

The News

20 minutes

• AlmaLinux 9.4 Beta Restores Support For Some Hardware Deprecated By RHEL
  • from Phoronix
  • AlmaLinux 9.4 Beta is out today for this popular community-oriented Linux distribution derived from upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Besides pulling in the RHEL 9.4 Beta changes, AlmaLinux 9.4 also restores hardware support for some devices that was deprecated by upstream RHEL.
  • The RHEL 9.4 Beta shipped in late March with the Intel Data Streaming Accelerator driver being fully supported, Intel SGX now being fully supported, NVMe over TCP being a tech preview feature, the ability to build FIPS-enabled RHEL for Edge images, Python 3.12 can be optionally installed, and many other upgrades available as well as some new module streams.
  • In addition to AlmaLinux 9.4 Beta pulling in all of the RHEL 9.4 Beta changes, AlmaLinux has restored support for some older hardware devices that is being phased out upstream. One of the differentiators being pursued by AlmaLinux is to (re)enable support for some older hardware/drivers that otherwise is losing focus with upstream Red Hat. For the AlmaLinux 9.4 Beta the expanded hardware support includes:
    • aacraid – Dell PERC2, 2/Si, 3/Si, 3/Di, Adaptec Advanced Raid Products, HP NetRAID-4M, IBM ServeRAID & ICP SCSI
    • be2iscsi – Emulex OneConnectOpen-iSCSI for BladeEngine 2 and 3 adapters
    • hpsa – HP Smart Array Controller
    • lpfc – Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel SCSI
    • megaraid_sas – Broadcom MegaRAID SAS
    • mpt3sas – LSI MPT Fusion SAS 3.0
    • mptsas – Fusion MPT SAS Host
    • qla2xxx – QLogic Fibre Channel HBA
    • qla4xxx – QLogic iSCSI HBA
  • In these cases it was just PCI IDs that needed to be added back in that were dropped by RHEL.
  • More details on the AlmaLinux 9.4 beta and downloads via AlmaLinux.org.
• Former Nouveau Lead Developer Joins NVIDIA, Continues Working On Open-Source Driver Joe
  • from Phoronix
  • Following last year Nouveau receiving support for running with the NVIDIA GSP firmware and initial GeForce RTX 40 series accelerated support, Ben Skeggs of Red Hat unexpectedly resigned as the Nouveau kernel driver maintainer. It turns out this longtime open-source Nouveau driver developer is now employed by NVIDIA Corp and continuing to work on the open-source Linux graphics driver.
  • Ben Skeggs is at NVIDIA. I’m not sure what is more surprising that he is at the green giant or that he’s able to continue working on the Nouveau driver in an official capacity. Ben Skeggs has been involved with the Nouveau project for more than a decade.
  • After months of being absent in Nouveau driver development happenings, last night he posted a set of 156 patches. This massive patch series is a follow-up to the Nouveau GSP firmware enablement work and cleans up the code. The focus on the series is replacing the ioctl-like interface between the NVKM and the Nouveau DRM driver to now leverage more direct calls for reducing the driver overhead and call chain complexity. In the process there’s also a fair amount of code cleaning. The 156 patches affect around ten thousand lines of code.
  • While NVIDIA has their open (out of tree) kernel drivers these days, it wasn’t on our bingo card to see Ben Skeggs at NVIDIA and to continue contributing directly to Nouveau. Interesting times ahead…
• Linux can finally run your car’s safety systems and driver-assistance features
  • from ArsTechnica
  • There’s a new Linux distro on the scene today, and it’s a bit specialized. Its development was led by the automotive electronics supplier Elektrobit, and it’s the first open source OS that complies with the automotive industry’s functional safety requirements.
  • One of the more interesting paradigm shifts underway in the automotive industry is the move to software-defined vehicles. Cars have increasingly been controlled by electronic systems during the past few decades, but it’s been piecemeal. Each added new function, like traction control, antilock braking, or a screen instead of physical gauges, required its own little black box added to the wiring loom.
  • There can now be more than 200 discrete controllers in a modern vehicle, all talking to each other through a CAN bus network. The idea behind the software-defined vehicle is to take a clean-sheet approach. Instead, you’ll find a small number of domain controllers—what the automotive industry is choosing to call “high performance compute” platforms—each responsible for a different set of activities.
  • Typically, there will be four domain controllers. One will handle vehicle dynamics and handling—control of the powertrain, ABS, traction and stability control systems, and so on. Another will be responsible for driver-assistance systems, managing the radar, camera, and ultrasonic sensors, processing their data, and controlling partially or fully automated driving systems. A third is dedicated to the infotainment, and a fourth might control the car’s convenience features like the climate or lighting. There also may be a fifth central controller overseeing everything.
  • You should expect to see this approach more often as automakers develop new platforms, and there are already examples from Audi, BMW, McLaren, and Porsche on the road or arriving shortly.
  • Obviously, some domains are more safety-critical than others. It can be inconvenient if the infotainment system crashes while you’re driving, but it won’t be a safety issue. But if the vehicle dynamics controller crashes, it’s obviously a lot more serious.
  • That’s why SDVs need to use safety-critical operating systems carrying the ISO 26262 ASIL certification where necessary. With Elektrobit’s EB corbos Linux for Safety Applications (that sure is a long name), there’s an open source Linux distro that finally fits the bill, having just been given the thumbs up by the German organization TÜV Nord. (It also complies with the IEC 61508 standard for safety applications.)
  • “The beauty of our concept is that you don’t even need to safety-qualify Linux itself,” said Moritz Neukirchner, a senior director at Elektrobit overseeing SDVs. Instead, an external safety monitor runs in a hypervisor, intercepting and validating kernel actions.
  • “When you look at how safety is typically being done, look at communication—you don’t safety-certify the communication specs or Ethernet stack, but you do a checker library on top, and you have a hardware anchor for checking down below, and you insure it end to end but take everything in between out of the certification path. And we have now created a concept that allows us to do exactly that for an operating system,” Neukirchner stated.
  • “So in the end, since we take Linux out of the certification path and make it usable in a safety-related context, we don’t have any problems in keeping up to speed with the developer community,” he explained. “Because if you start it off and say, ‘Well, we’re going to do Linux as a one-shot for safety,’ you’re going to have the next five patches and you’re off [schedule] again, especially with the security regulation that’s now getting toward effect now, starting in July with the UNECE R155 that requires continuous cybersecurity management vulnerability scanning for all software that ends up in the vehicle.”
  • “In the end, we see roughly 4,000 kernel security patches within eight years for Linux. And this is the kind of challenge that you’re being put up to if you want to participate in that speed of innovation of an open source community as rich as that of Linux and now want to combine this with safety-related applications,” Neukirchner said.
  • Elektrobit developed EB corbos Linux for Safety Applications together with Canonical, and together they will share the maintenance of keeping it compliant with safety requirements over time.
• Microsoft adds MS-DOS 4.0 to their Open-Source Github page Bill
  • Not much story behind this, but Microsoft snuck the MS-DOS 4.0 code into their GitHub page, joining MS-DOS 1.25 and MS-DOS 2.0 in their open source repo on April 25^th.
  • Not 3.x? Not 5?
• Ubuntu 24.04 Official Flavours Available to Download
  • from OMGUbuntu
  • Arriving alongside the main Ubuntu 24.04 LTS release are new versions of the official Ubuntu flavours, including Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Ubuntu Cinnamon.
  • Unless otherwise noted, all flavours share the same foundational footprint as the main release, e.g., Linux kernel, graphics drivers, tooling, etc. But some fears, like the Flutter-based OS installer and the snap-centric App Center aren’t used in all flavours.
  • Additionally, and this is an important point for those who prefer long-term support (LTS) releases, Ubuntu flavors get 3 years of ongoing support rather than the 5 years the main edition receives. It’s a small difference but one that’s worth being aware of.
  • So what’s new? Well, a lot if you’re coming from the respecting 22.04 builds of some of these flavours. As with regular Ubuntu there’s a cumulative change-set spanning the 22.10, 23.04, and 23.10 releases for a number of these editions.
  • The KDE-based editions, Kubuntu 24.04 LTS and Ubuntu Studio 24.04 LTS, come kitted out with the KDE Plasma 5.27.11 desktop environment, applications and utilities in KDE Gear 23.08.5, and KDE Frameworks 5.114.
  • Education-orientated Edubuntu 24.04 LTS is equipped with GNOME 46 (and all the improvements that brings), intros a minimal install option, two new metapackages available in the Edubuntu Installer, and adds Gradebook to its default software set.
  • Lubuntu 24.04 LTS offers the LXQt 1.4.0 desktop environment and a clutch of new utilities, including a (rather neat) new snap monitor tool, SDDM (login screen) configuration editor, Lubuntu Update checker, and Redshift-Qt for melatonin-friendly blue light reduction.
  • Ubuntu Unity 24.04 LTS touts the Unity 7.7 desktop environment and, like Kubuntu has this cycle, now uses Calamares as its installer. As the newest Ubuntu flavour this release marks Ubuntu Unity’s first long-term support edition.
  • Ubuntu Cinnamon 24.04 LTS caries the recent Cinnamon 6.0.4 desktop environment bringing some of the coolest features found in Linux Mint 21.3 to fans of a more traditional *buntu base. This is the first long-term support release of Ubuntu Cinnamon.
  • Ubuntu Budgie 24.04 LTS comes with the latest Budgie 10.9.1 desktop release, Welcome app updates, and a variety of new and improved applets. Ubuntu Kylin 24.04 ships with a small set of tweaks to its custom Windows 7-esque UKUI desktop.
  • Elsewhere, Ubuntu MATE 24.04 LTS makes some strident software swaps, dropping its Welcome tool and replacing Software Boutique with Ubuntu’s Flutter-based App Center, but switches the Flutter-based Firmware Updater tool for GNOME Firmware.
  • Finally, Xubuntu 24.04 LTS — which I can’t lie: I do have a real soft spot for 😅.
  • The latest Xubuntu release offers (as you’d expect) the Xfce 4.18 desktop. It also swaps GNOME Software for the snap-based App Center and adds Gdebi (to allow outra-repo DEB installs) and the snap-based Firmware Updater to its default seed.
  • While Xubuntu 24.04 LTS uses Ubuntu’s Flutter-based installer it doesn’t default to a minimal install (though a minimal option is present). As such, a raft of software, including the new Thunderbird snap and LibreOffice 24.2 series, is available to use straight away.
• Why You Shouldn’t Upgrade to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Yet
  • from OMGUbuntu
  • With Ubuntu 24.04 LTS released and a long weekend upon us you might be planning to upgrade an existing Ubuntu install to the latest version.
  • But don’t.
  • For one, “officially” you can’t since Ubuntu 24.04 LTS upgrades are not yet enabled, neither from Ubuntu 23.10 nor 22.04 LTS.
  • But that doesn’t stop us folks from upgrading manually.
  • They hear that a new version of Ubuntu is out and stable, they don’t fancy the faff of a fresh install, and they don’t want to wait for the “new version available” upgrade prompt to appear on their desktop.
  • So they go to Google for a ‘how to’, learn about the sudo do-release-upgrade -d command run it, and away they go.
  • “The final release is stable so upgrading, even with the -d flag should be safe!”
  • Right now there are major bugs impacting direct upgrades from earlier versions.
  • We’re talking “your system may become unrecoverable” type issues.
  • Snafus stem from the switch to Thunderbird snap1 (on installs with the DEB installed upgrading to 24.04 replaces it with the snap) and the complicated tangle of Y2028 time_t transitions2 (anyone who used daily builds will be familiar with the pain they caused).
  • Critical fixes are on the way but until they arrive and Ubuntu’s developers are able to re-test direct upgrades to verify they solve things (and don’t introduce further issues) official upgrades won’t be enabled and CLI DIY upgrades are strictly not advised.
  • As of writing this (before I depart for the weekend) those fixes aren’t in place.
  • My advice for now is to forget what blogs say —stones, glass houses, etc — and do not upgrade through any means until Ubuntu’s engineers give the nod.
  • Super-duper impatient? Suck it up and download the ISO and do a fresh install instead. Those are not affected by these issues and, on the plus side, you get to see all the fancy new things added to the installer.

— Play Security Transition Bumper —

Security and Privacy

10 minutes

• I’ve got NOTHING

— Play Wanderings Transition Bumper —

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

30 minutes (~5-8 mins each)

• Bill
  • The migration of Linux OTC is complete. For a couple of weeks now, I’ve been putting in the measurable effort of migrating my other Linux podcast from a relatively well known podcasting provider to archive.org. I am quite happy to say it’s all done, and nobody needs to care. Anyone subscribed to the show will continue to recived bi-weekly episodes delivered to wherever they get their podcasts. This is possible because of the miracle of 301 redirects. If I were a normal human being, I would have left things alone and continued to enjoy the convience of having a third party work out all the nuances of distributing a podcast to the many different providers including those that simply need an RSS feed as well as Apple podcast – ah yes, Apple podcasts. So uploading your show to Archive.org hardly seems like an example of self-hosting, in the case of a podcast that you want to distribute via RSS and Apple very much is – to a surprising degree. Most platforms that simply offer up a podcast via an RSS feed don’t care about what size the artwork is, or in what format the show’s metadata is delivered. Apple podcasts has specific standards that must be met, otherwise the show will be delivered in a less than optimal manner, for example if the artwork is wrong, it will simply not display. MintCast has for years been distributed this way. Upon completion of editing, episodes are uploaded to archive.org, a link to the “mp3” file is added to a plugin on our wordpress website, and the episode is added to the RSS feed. This is the behavior I wanted to duplicate for Linux OTC. Archive.org is among other things a supporter of all things “creative commons.” All of the episodes of all three of the shows I’m a part of are released under the Creative commons attribution, “share alike” license. I’ve never been comfortable declaring that license on our website, while uploading the episodes to a third party on a “free of charge” tier of their platform. I’m not a lawyer so I’m not sure if we can fight against a company that has hidden some kind of clause in their EULA giving them intellectual rights over our work. I don’t really have anything against the service I was using for the show. If someone were to ask me to recommend a service with a free tier, I would definitely tell them to give it a try. Again, if I were a normal human being, none of this would be an issue, but there in lies the rub.
  • I’ve been having a little fun trying out a couple of new microphones: I’ve added the Golden Age Project FC1 MKII Large-Diaphragm Condenser Microphone, and the Shure MV7X XLR Podcast Microphone which I’m talking on now to my modest, yet growing collection. Though I’ve only briefly tested the FC1 yesterday during our show meeting, I’ve been using the MV7X for a week now. The mistake I made last week during the recording of Linux OTC, and 3 Fat Truckers was that I didn’t test record before. I didn’t change the gain from what it had been set for the Electro-Voice RK320. The sound was less than perfect, making me sound as though I was clipping even at low volume. I hope the quality for this show is improved. In addition to the microphone, I’m using a FetHead Preamp with Nickel Core Transformer which is like a cloud lifter, or pre-amp signal booster to give about 28 dB of clean gain for dynamic microphones. This particular model of FetHead is supposed to also give the sound a warm sort of undertone, similar to classic radio. I’m not sure if I have the voice that goes well with a warm delivery, but you the listener will have to be the judge. These Shure mics are what you commonly see the more prolific tik toc and YouTube creators using to cook their content. Though I’m not ready to pass definitive judgement yet, I’m a little skeptical. The SM7B which is what you most often see in the videos, you know – the one that looks like a tennis ball can, painted black is priced at $400 starting price, with another model sporting a built – in preamp going for $500. The model I have is half that price, but not lacking in detail. Honestly I can’t decide yet if it’s worth the money. A normal human being can get arguably parallel quality with a Samson Q2U, hooked up with a usb cord. Again – normal human beings. I do find these microphones to all be interesting, because they all seem to have their own personality. I only wish I had more time to play around with them.
  • Like my collegues, I am super pleased to have as a guest Alan Pope, AKA Popey on our show. I’m quite sure I don’t need to, but I’ll mention: you all might know him from The Ubuntu Podcast, User Error, The New Show, and most recently, Linux Matters. I don’t want to make too much of a fuss, because we’ve had lots of amazing guests on mintCasts, and they’ve all been an absolute pleasure to chat with, but I have to mention how star struck we all are. As strange as it may sound, Linux podcasts are literally my favorite form of syndicated entertainment, so the people who are doing it well are the celebrities in my world. Alright so enough of all that.
• Joe
  • I found out that my desk is a fairly popular one in the 3d printing community and has a lot of available prints made just for it. It is called a jerker desk. I have not printed many of the items but I have printed a speaker shelf that I am using to hold my travel router on. I am thinking that I will print a couple more of those shelves for my network switch and my DAS box but I need to pick up some more long bolts first
  • I have also been doing a lot of testing with my 3D printer which has been having trouble with overhangs. Lots of tests with different temperatures and cooling and speeds. I was trying to print out a quick print which I knew had problems because of the sharp angle of the walls. Still usable when complete but looks ugly.
  • I was also trying to print out the golden claw from skyrim for my wife which has a very long steep back wall.
  • With this I also decided to test out PrusaSlicer. I have been a Cura user the entire time I have been 3D printing. The interface is very different between the two and there is a bit of a learning curve. I do like how the save file includes the print time but I feel like it is much more difficult to increase overall print speed.
  • PrusaSlicer is an appimage just like Cura so very easy to get running.
  • I do still want to continue testing with it and seeing if I think it it is better or not. Especially since I cannot use the most recent versions of cura and PS has arachne built in.
  • While I was doing this testing and trying to dial in my prints my X-axis belt snapped. Not a difficult fix. Had to wait to get the part but it does pop right off and the new one is not too difficult to get back on. I also got a new Y-axis belt at the same time.
  • When I switched slicers I also went back to a larger .6mm nozzle for quicker prints. Which is one of the reasons I am happy that PS is using the Arachne engine
  • I got a chainsaw on a stick. It just sounds so cool when I saw it like that. I got a letter from the city saying that my tree out front was covering up the stop sign and it needed to be fixed. I had not really thought about that being an issue but yeah I guess that makes sense. I did have a couple of people show up and offer to do the job. But they all wanted 450 to 550 dollars to do the job. In the past I think we paid something like 200 to do it.
  • So I decided to do it myself. I purchased two chainsaws. One of them a chainsaw on a extendable pole and I got to work. Took a couple of hours but I got the tree trimmed to something manageable and everything moved into the back yard with the help of the kids. Then I used the electric chainsaw and cut down the larger pieces into firewood sized chunks. Piled everything up next to last years stuff that fell which is now seasoned and cut down to size and we should be good on firewood for a couple of years.
  • God I hurt after that was done. Maybe I AM getting too old for this. But I spent $180 on chainsaws and saved myself some money in the long run. Yes they are electric plugin chainsaws but they get the job done.
  • I also wanted to test out Bluetooth audio on my desktop again since I had some luck with it on some of my smaller Linux devices (the OneGX and the Steam Deck). I was once again very disappointed. I tried a few different dongles including some that were known to work very well on Linux and still the audio connection was garbage. Constant drop outs and needing to clear the pairing and start over again and again. Maybe the issue is dongles and I should switch to PCIe?
  • Have not had a lot of time for my Steam Deck, but I have continued to play Skyrim every now and again before bed while the wife uses her Switch. I have also 3D-printed some controller wall mounts to help keep them out of the way when they are not in use.
  • I also found some files on printables for the Deckmate. I printed a different version of the back piece that does not interfere with most of the docking stations that are available. I also printed a different version of the universal mounts that does not require the heat set inserts. Makes for much less of a hassle and a lower profile.
  • I am still looking at different batteries that I can pair with the deck because I think that the backup battery that I have right now will take up too much space on the back and probably make it difficult to use the buttons on the back. we shall see.
  • I also like the modularity of the connector and I may see if I can repurpose some of it to mount things in other locations. I have looked at several other solutions for mounting things to my chair but I want to give this one a try. Probably have to do some minor modifications to the STL.
  • Finaly was able to play some arcanum on the steam deck using the community patch. The game is from 2001 and it is still awesome in my opinion. I really enjoy the ways that you can build the character and use either magic or technology or both. There are still some issues that i am working through to get it running a little bit smoother as transition screens can take a very long time and sometimes scrolling the map can cause the game to lag out for a minute or two at a time. But i think that i can reduce that by lowering the resolution on the screen. We shall see.
  • You do have to setup all the controls yourself and i did have to look up online what all the controls were and how the hotkeys work. You can really map everything for the game but you can make it playable. Maybe i will play this one hooked to a screen and keyboard and mouse
  • I tried out the Ghostrunner demo. The game looks awesome and the mechanics are cool. It is difficult to control with all the crazy things that you can do with it. One thing that i noticed after 20 mintues of making my way through the demo is motion sickness. Evidently this is a common enough problem for the game and people have come up with some work arounds on how to reduce that. I have not bought the maingame yet so i have no way to implement them so i will be waiting for another sale before i get it.
    
    
• Moss
  • Life has been quite life-like of late. I’ve had some work. The local High school students are still needing my lack of skills…
  • We did get fiberoptic cable to our house, 100 Mbps up and down. It has made somewhat of a difference, more so because we got to leave Comcast to do this. Many thanks to Bill for the use of his wifi router, otherwise we would have had to pay an additional $15/mo to rent one from the provider. It is further interesting because our provider is also our electric provider, but we have to maintain separate accounts for each. I guess we don’t want to lose power just because we didn’t pay our Internet bill… KUB also provides water service to a large area, but that does not include where we live.
  • I have been asked to be a special music guest at Balticon, to be held in Baltimore over the Memorial Day weekend. I’ll get a concert and sit on a few panels. I’m excited… but…
  • Our little 2011 Chevy Cruze just was not up to the task of long distance trips. It runs well but is not reliable, too many cheap plastic pieces around the engine. So I bought my wife a 2014 Hyundai Elantra GT Hatchback. However, the first thing that happened was the car popped a Check Engine code, stating the catalytic converter(s) was (were) not funtioning. So we took it back to the place we bought it, to get one or both cats replaced. No idea when we’ll get it back. Amazingly, our insurance decreased a bit with the new car.
  • I’ve been managing to keep Full Circle Weekly News up to date. Should have another episode out today.
  • I gave KDE neon User Edition another shot to check out Plasma 6. Nothing earth-shattering yet, but it still feels like it does 300 updates a day. Some people have raved about this or that but apparently I don’t use those things. I continue to find that using apt in the terminal to do my updates is quicker and easier than using Discover, so I do. Also, to date, Plasma 6 Mobile does not funtion properly on my PineTab 2, so I’m still using my Debian-based distro.
  • I have taken a few more of my life functions off Google. It is taking forever, but hopefully I will avoid the snafus this way.
• Majid
  • So its been a bit more sensible week at work. I had a bit of good news in that I may not have to do the extra long night hours anymore. This will lead to a drop in pay, but I think the decrease in cognitive load (not to mention physical fatigue) means that it’ll be worth the the decrease in pay.
  • Tech-wise, so I’ve been trying to update my Ubuntu 23.10 install to 24.04. I don’t know whether I’m just a bit early, but however I tried, my box just couldn’t seem to find the update (whether by terminal or GUI). The reason I’m so keen (apart from my general nerdiness) is that I’ve heard that battery life is improved with the newer kernel and Gnome version. As I’ve mentioned before, battery life is really important to me, and I’ve yet to find anything that compares to the M1 Macbook Air I briefly had.
  • My wife is complaining about the EliteBook again. She keeps harping on about how bad the battery life is (even after Slimbook Battery, etc.). Again it’s the non-linear decrease that she finds most annoying. TBH I’m not sure what the big deal is. It never leaves the house anyway, so why not just have it plugged in when using. But of course thats a rational way of looking at it! A friend has recently bought a new Macbook and is looking to get rid of his old 2015 Macbook Air. I’m half-tempted to buy it and give it to her. Battery life will still be rubbish probably cos its Intel, and there’s always the possibility of putting Linux onto it, though I might need to do some more research on this as it seems there are some TPM issues? If anyone knows anything about this then drop us a message.
  • The Galaxy Buds2 Pro got returned. At the end of the day, they just weren’t significantly better then the Buds FE that I already had, and it just seemed like an added expense. Plus the sound isolation for others was terrible, everyone knows that I am listening! This however didn’t stop me getting sucked into the Nothing Ear (a) hype. I’m a sucker for “ecosystem” and so having accidentally got into the Samsung ecosystem, and having a Nothing 2a phone (ostensibly for work) I went for it in the distinctive yellow colour. It arrived on release day (22.4) and I’m really liking them. They support LDAC and whilst I have some Sony XM4 earbuds, those are a bit uncomfortable, these Ear (a) earbuds are much more comfortable, excellent sound, good (if not fantastic) ANC and overall good to use. Also has chatGPT functionality, though havent actually tried that out yet.
  • I bought a new smartwatch, the OnePlus Watch 2. Now I have flitted between Samsung Galaxy watches and Mobvois Ticwatches. This is because whilst the Samsungs have better app support with WearOS, the battery life is terrible. The converse is true for the Ticwatches, epic battery life (didn’t even take the charger to Morroco) but rubbish software/app support. (Interestingly, I did have a Galaxy watch when they ran Tizen and the battery life was really good then). I have been getting fed up with the fact that the Watch 4 Classic I have nearly runs out by the end of the day, and sleep-tracking isnt possible with it. I had seen lot of reviews of the OnePlus Watch 2 talking about its epic battery life, but was hesitant because: ecosystem (I only recently sold my OnePlus 11). But finally succumbed to an Amazon discount. It’s brilliant! Much more upmarket build quality than the Ticwatches, and the battery life is great. Have only charged it twice in the 2 weeks I’ve had it. Thats with everything switched on. Looks nice too!
  • Having discussed gaming a lot in the last few episodes, I decided to get a game controller. On Joe’s recommendation, I bought the 8Bit Pro. Now this is a decent controller, however (1.) I have terrible hand-eye coordination and (2.) a lot of the games I tried to play on my tablet/phone didn’t support controllers (looking at you, Call of Duty). I then remembered we had an extra PS5 controller in the house (my son had bought when he thought his original controller didn’t work). Therefore I returned it (thanks Amazon Prime). Next question is to see whether I can snap up a Steam Deck on eBay.
  • Speaking of Amazon Prime, they are the gift that keeps giving. So having found out that my Amazon Music Unlimited subscription had been renewed despite my best efforts, I decided I might as well use it. Well this was a mistake, as it seems that all this Ultra HD, Dolby Atmos whatever takes up a lot of mobile data, and since I listen mainly outside the house, I was hitting my monthly data limit (which I had never done before), so this month I’m going to have a slightly higher phone bill. Thanks again, Amazon.
  • And to compound my evident Stockholm Syndrome, I paid for ad-free Amazon Prime Video (an extra 2 quid a month). I despair at myself sometimes!
  • X-Men 97 is going along nicely, as is Star Trek Discovery (to my surprise!) Constellation has stalled for me, my attention span post covid is shot!
  • I like alternate history so have just bought “The Dragon Waiting” by John Ford. Looks interesting.
  • I’m incredibly star-struck having Alan Pope on the Roundtable last week and then on the show today… I feel like I’m a Popey groupie!
• Alan
  • I started a new job recently as Director of Developer Relations at Anchore
  • Anchore is a company making open source security tools like Syft, Grype and Grant
  • My daily driver is a Mac!
  • (I still use Linux)
  • Anchore also has enteprirse products for organisations
  • I also recently celebrated one year of the Linux Matters podcast. We started in March last year. Mark, Martin and myself present what we have been up to every two weeks. We don’t cover news, internet drama or anything else negative. Only uplifting, positive, and fun stuff we have used or plan to.
  • We did a ‘feedback’ episode which pulls together all the emails we have received over the last 6 months since we did the last one.

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Linux Innards

30 minutes (~5-8 minutes each)

• INTERVIEW may end up very free form

Questions for Alan Pope (interview on 28.4.24)

1. When did you first get into Linux and why?
2. First Distro?
3. What distro you using (and why?)
4. Favourite Distro of all time (and why)
5. Are you a distro-hopper?
6. How have you been linked with Ubuntu & Canonical
7. How did the podcasting start?
8. Is podcasting your main thing now or do you have a “proper” job
9. Whats the biggest changes you’ve seen in your time in linux
10. Alan’s take on Snaps and universal package formats (since he’s been involved)
11. Why the de-snap tool?
12. Where do you think Linux will be in 5 years time
13. What technology is most exciting for you?
14. Is AI the future?
15. Privacy/Security/Data thoughts in the age of big tech and AI
16. How does that work contrast with your position at Anchore?
17. I would like to know your opinion on cryptocurrencies
18. You have worked with SAP for a while tell us about SAP, what it is and how it is used
19. I will be stealing your recipe for Korean BBQ chicken loaded fries

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Vibrations from the Ether

20 minutes (~5 minutes each)

• Robert
  • Just giving feedback on new chapters and Links in podcast. INCREDIBLY HELPFUL!!! THANK YOU!!!! seriously it is so helpful when keeping up with all the great content you so out out in each show!
  • Thank you for the review on the RS36s, question, are the games preloaded? Or do I need to acquire the ROMs for the various platform games (PSP, Gameboy…)? Is there a page that lists all the games preloaded? (If they are)
  • So much other good stuff in this show thank you again!
• Robert
  • Hey Majid! Thank you for your content on the podcast! Is there any chance you can do tutorial on installing lineage OS on phone? I can’t find good tutorial using Linux to do the install on old pixel phone. I can get to getting fastboot to work and unlock bootloader but can’t get OS to work. If not I understand I know you are very busy just thought I’d ask. Thanks again for the great show!
• Zen Floater2
  • I just bought a new Lenova Laptop a week ago and installed Linux Mint EDGE on it as
  • no other distro seemed to support everything on this laptop. Some of them wouldn’t even boot.
  • Anyway, Fedora 40 was just released and so I downloaded the workstation ISO and installed it over Linux Mint.
  • The install went flawlessly and everything worked. I downloaded the Fedora easytether.rpm and installed it using rpm -i –force easywhatever.rpm ,,, the libssl stuff was installed in Fedora and it works but, they called the package something different now for libssl. So you have to use the –force option then start easytether-usb by hand as root from a terminal to get it going. It works fine.
  • The sound from the speakers was low even though I turned it all the way up on the desktop. I ended up having to install pavucontrol to get the volumen high enough I could hear clearly. There is no BOOST MAX for the sound on GNOME unfortunately. pavucontrol showed all the output sound controls at maximum and I just bumped it past 100$ and the sound came back loudly.
  • the desktop is rather drab. I had to beautify their terminal some and changed the style of the desktop and wallpaper as it was really drab looking.
  • Post the first dnf update I had a linux 6.8 kernel on the box. I haven’t run everything but, of what I have run it seems to be very stable and runs great.
  • I do like GNOME. GNOME is very simple and plain like Crunch Bang Linux Open BOX was.
  • It reminds me of Open Box somewhat.
  • They set a dark theme to everything and I agreed with that. A dark theme is better but just don’t put GREY characters on a dark terminal screen. I greened it up quite a bit and enabled transparency.
  • the track pad is not a right click but rather a double bottom click like on a chromebook. Since I also run chromebooks this was okay with me. I had to change the scrolling from NATURAL to TRADITIONAL. So traditional track pad scrolling is not natural??? I guess???
  • they had power saving set to maximum and I turned all that off as I don’t want my screen dimming or going off every 5 minutes.
  • When I opened the software center, there was a message wanted me to reboot to finish installing some drivers, which it does on the next reboot.. dnf update doesn’t tell you about this kind of stuff from your terminal, you must open the software center to see it.
  • All my hardware is supported and running fine.
  • They even had the clock up top set for AM/PM which I approve of. And MC midnight commender had lynx scrolling tunned on OUT OF THE BOX, which was cool.
  • Funny but programs like mp3blaster are not found on Fedora repos yet, abiword still is.
  • ansiweather is not in Fedora repos. Linux Mint has mp3blaster and ansiweather.
  • Signify from OpenBSD was in the Fedora repos. Winff is not found in the Fedora repos.
  • Fedora qemu seems fine. You just have to get used to having some of your old slackware
  • stuff being swept away by the new kids around here.
  • Sincerely
  • Charlie
• Dale Miracle
  • Hello everyone!
  • I enjoyed Joe’s discussion on Pi-Hole and WireGuard. I have a similar configuration using Pi-Hole and Tailscale.
  • I have two Pi-Holes running as native services on my Ubuntu Servers. They are using Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny’s. I keep them synchronized using Gravity Sync.
  • https://github.com/vmstan/gravity-sync
  • It will not sync the active DHCP leases, logs, and few other upstream DNS settings. I use PFsense for my DHCP so the limitation doesn’t affect me. I have Quad 9’s DNS configured on one of the Ubuntu Servers and Cloudflare’s DNS configured on the other.
  • I chose Tailscale because it is so easy to get up and going using the basic service. I told a friend about it over the phone and he had it running within minutes of me telling him about it. One aspect I like is how it doesn’t need a port opened on my firewall. The client running on my TrueNas scale box makes an outbound connection to Tailscale. This serves two useful purposes. Tailscale is able to keep a record of my external IP address. The outbound connection doesn’t need a port opened in typical default firewall configurations. So any traffic coming back into my network is allowed since it is an established connection state in the firewall table.
  • I haven’t had a lot of time to test the local lan access feature using local DNS. It worked on my Pixel 6 Pro but it didn’t work on my laptops. I am not that concerned because I can use the hostnames that Tailscale created for each device.
  • The exit node feature works quite well. At least one device in the network needs the exit node feature enabled.
  • Kind regards,
  • Dale

— Play Check This Transition Bumper —

Check This Out

10 minutes

• https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2024/04/dont-upgrade-to-ubuntu-24-04-yet/amp

Housekeeping & Announcements

• Thank you for listening to this episode of mintCast!
• If you see something that you’d like to hear about, tell us!

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• Next Episode – 2 pm US Central time on Sunday, May 12, 2024.
• Get mintCast converted to your time zone
• for 436 Next Roundtable Live Stream – 2 pm US Central time on Saturday, May 4, 2024.
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• Get the Roundtable Live Stream converted to your time zone
• Livestream information is at mintcast.org/livestream

Wrap-up

• Joe – Tllts.org,  linuxlugcast.com, [email protected], Buy Joe a coffee
• Moss – Full Circle Weekly News, [email protected], Mastodon @[email protected], music on YouTube and Bandcamp if you look for it.
• Bill – [email protected], Bill_H on Discord, @[email protected] on Mastodon, also – checkout my other two podcasts Linux OTC and 3 Fat Truckers
• Majid – [email protected] @atypicaldr870on twitter, AtypicalDr on instagram and The Atypical Doctor Podcast on Spotify and also Linux OTC.
• Eric – You can hear and see me on this and the Linux OTC podcasts as well as the Linux Saloon and LinuxLUGCast streams. If you’d like to get in touch with me I can be reached by email at [email protected], Discord (eric_adams), Telegram (https://t.me/ericadams), Matrix (@esa1975:matrix.org), and Mastodon (https://fosstodon.org/@ericadams). Links in the show notes.

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

• Someone for our audio editing
• Archive.org for hosting our audio files
• Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
• Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
• Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
• The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>

— Play Closing Music and Standard Outro —