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

This is Episode 445!

This is Episode 445.5!

Recorded on Sunday, September 8, 2024.

Working while working Joe; recharged and redrained, I’m Moss; God save the King I’m Majid; and I forgot to put something in, this is Eric

— Play Standard Intro —

• Please remember if you want to follow along with our discussions, the full show notes for this episode are linked in the show’s description
• First up in the news: KITE OS educational Linux developed in Kerala, India, Microsoft rolls out Windows Recall again, Linus regrets merging BCacheFS again, 4M Linux 46 released;
• In security and privacy: “Something has gone seriously wrong,” dual-boot systems warn after Microsoft update, “sedxp” Linux malware avoids detection for two years;
• Then in our Wanderings: Majid is back from his travels, Moss, Joe, Eric gets his PineTime

• In our Innards section: we do wearables
• And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

— Play News Transition Bumper —

The News

20 minutes

• KITE develops FOSS-based OS for public schools – Majid
  • from The Hindu
  • Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) has completed the development of a new free and open-source software (FOSS)-based operating system (OS) suite KITE GNU Linux 22.04 that can be used in three lakh computers available in public schools in the State.
  • The KITE GNU Linux 22.04 can be used as a complete computing platform not only for ICT learning in schools but also by students and teachers, and on computers used in homes, government offices, DTP centres, printing presses, software development companies, engineering colleges, and so on. The new version of the OS has been developed using the Wayland system instead of the xorg window mechanism currently used in operating systems in schools.
  • A customised version of the popular FOSS OS Ubuntu, the new OS suite includes applications such as GCompris, Tux Paint, PictoBlox, Traffic game, Waste challenge, Omnitux, EDU Activate, PhET, GeoGebra, Libre Office package, Colour Paint, Scratch, and Krita.
  • Given that artificial intelligence (AI) has been included in the ICT textbook for Class VII from this year, the KITE GNU Linux 22.04 includes tools to understand the basics of concepts related to AI, machine learning, computer vision, and more.
  • The new OS also features elaborate systems for Malayalam computing, ebook reader, desktop publishing software, graphics and image editing software, sound recording and video editing tools, 3D animation packages, screen recording and broadcast tools, integrated development environment for programming, database servers and applications, and desktop version of mobile apps.
  • KITE has equipped schools with laptops that utilise entirely free software, replacing the previously licensed software used for courses in higher secondary schools and National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF) job roles in vocational higher secondary in the public education sector. This resulted in savings of ₹3,000 crore from two lakh computers.
  • “KITE will provide training to all school IT coordinators in installing the new OS in all computers in schools,” KITE chief executive officer K. Anvar Sadath said. The new OS suite can be downloaded for free from the download link on the KITE website www.kite.kerala.gov.in from Friday.
  • Minister for General Education V. Sivankutty will launch the new OS suite at the inaugural session of Little KITEs State camp at KITE’s regional resource centre in Ernakulam at 10.30 a.m. on Friday.
• Upgrades to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Paused Due to ‘Critical Bug’ Eric
  • From OMGUbuntu
  • Last week, the first point release of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS arrived, and upgrades from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to the newest one officially enabled.
  • However, those upgrades didn’t go smoothly for everyone who tried, be it on Ubuntu server or Ubuntu desktop.
  • To prevent further headaches, Canonical has decided to pause upgrades to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS while its developers work out the kinks.
  • Yesterday, the ‘noble’ release got edited out of the meta-release-lts file (which Ubuntu systems check to detect new versions), preventing users from upgrading to Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS through officially-supported methods. Folks attempting to upgrade, but suddenly finding they couldn’t, were left wondering why.
  • In reply, Canonical explains that it halted upgrades “due to a critical bug in ubuntu-release-upgrader in the way it’s using the apt solver” (though other recurring issues have been reported on Launchpad and mentioned on social media in the past week).
  • Of course, issues ought to be expected in any major OS upgrade, especially for LTS-to-LTS transitions, as upgrading an extensive foundational stack that’s 2 years old is far from trivial. Even the most attentive testing prior to release won’t uncover every edge-case calamity in time.
  • Plus, this isn’t the first time Noble upgrades have caused issues. When Ubuntu 24.04 LTS was released in April, users on Ubuntu 23.10 were able to upgrade, but later advised not to due to critical bugs (unrelated to this one).
  • Developers are now working to resolve the issue causing LT- to-LTS upgrades to fail (for some users), but until those fixes are ready, upgrades will remain paused.
  • Upgrades to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS from 22.04 will be re-enabled once everything is out, in place, and deemed stable enough.
  • Still, once those upgrades are re-enabled I’d recommend anyone planning to make the leap to keep some ‘recovery media’ (like a bootable Ubuntu installer on a USB drive) to hand — just in case.
• Microsoft will try the data-scraping Windows Recall feature again in October – Majid
  • from Ars Technica
  • Microsoft will begin sending a revised version of its controversial Recall feature to Windows Insider PCs beginning in October, according to an update published today to the company’s original blog post about the Recall controversy. The company didn’t elaborate further on specific changes it’s making to Recall beyond what it already announced in June.
  • For those unfamiliar, Recall is a Windows service that runs in the background on compatible PCs, continuously taking screenshots of user activity, scanning those screenshots with optical character recognition (OCR), and saving the OCR text and the screenshots to a giant searchable database on your PC. The goal, according to Microsoft, is to help users retrace their steps and dig up information about things they had used their PCs to find or do in the past.
  • The problem was that other users on the same PC, or attackers with physical or remote access to your PC, could easily access, view, and export those screenshots and the OCR database since none of the information was encrypted at rest or protected in any substantive way.
  • Microsoft had planned to launch Recall as one of the flagship features of its Copilot+ PC launch in July, along with the new Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Surface devices, but its rollout was bumped back and then paused entirely so that Recall could be reworked and then sent out to Windows Insiders for testing like most other Windows features are.
  • Among the changes Microsoft has said it will make: The database will be encrypted at rest and will require authentication (and periodic reauthentication) with Windows Hello before users will be allowed to access it. The feature will also be off by default, whereas the original plan was to turn it on by default and make users go into Settings to turn it off.
  • “Security continues to be our top priority and when Recall is available for Windows Insiders in October we will publish a blog with more details,” reads today’s update to Microsoft Windows and Devices Corporate Vice President Pavan Davuluri’s blog post.
  • When the preview is released, Windows Insiders who want to test the Recall preview will need to do it on a PC that meets Microsoft’s Copilot+ system requirements. Those include a processor with a neural processing unit (NPU) capable of at least 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS), 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. The x86 builds of Windows for Intel and AMD processors don’t currently support any Copilot+ features regardless of whether the PC meets those requirements, but that should change later this year.
  • That said, security researchers and reporters who found the holes in the original version of Recall could only find them because it was possible to enable them on unsupported PCs, just as it’s possible to run Windows 11 on PCs that don’t meet the system requirements. It’s possible that users will figure out how to get Recall and other Copilot+ features running on unsupported PCs at some point, too.
• Linus Torvalds Begins Expressing Regrets Merging Bcachefs Moss
  • from Phoronix
  • There’s been some Friday night kernel drama on the Linux kernel mailing list… Linus Torvalds has expressed regrets for merging the Bcachefs file-system and an ensuing back-and-forth between the file-system maintainer.
  • On Friday a set of fixes were submitted for merging into the current Linux 6.11 cycle. There were little fixes plus two big “fixes” around an rhashtable conversion and a new data structure for managing free lists in the BTree key cache. That later one eliminates the BTree key cache lock and avoids some locking contention that can appear in some multi-threaded workloads.
  • But this “fixes” pull request touches more than one thousand lines of code and we’re now more than half-way through the Linux 6.11 cycle. This is far from the first time that big “fixes” pulls for Bcachefs have been submitted post merge window and not the first time that it’s not strictly bug fixes but also heavier more feature-like additions being made via fixes pull requests. Linus Torvalds had enough and responded to the pull request:
    • “Yeah, no, enough is enough. The last pull was already big.
    • This is too big, it touches non-bcachefs stuff, and it’s not even remotely some kind of regression.
    • At some point “fix something” just turns into development, and this is that point.
    • Nobody sane uses bcachefs and expects it to be stable, so every single user is an experimental site.
    • The bcachefs patches have become these kinds of “lots of development during the release cycles rather than before it”, to the point where I’m starting to regret merging bcachefs.
    • If bcachefs can’t work sanely within the normal upstream kernel release schedule, maybe it shouldn’t *be* in the normal upstream kernel.
    • This is getting beyond ridiculous.”
  • To which Kent responded and argued that “Bcachefs is _definitely_ more trustworthy than Btrfs”, “I’m working to to make it more robust and reliable than xfs and ext4 (and yes, it will be) with_end to end data integrity_,” and other passionate commentary.
  • Torvalds then countered that there still aren’t any major Linux distributions using Bcachefs, Linux kernel release rules should be followed, and the chances of new bugs coming up from 1000+ line patches of “fixes”. There were several back-and-forth Friday night comments on the Linux kernel mailing list.
  • The Bcachefs “fixes” pull wasn’t pulled and no revised pull request strictly limiting the changes to pure bug fixes have been submitted yet.
• 4MLinux 46 Mini Linux Distro Released with New Apps, Integrated LAMP Server Moss
  • from 9 to 5 Linux
  • 4MLinux developer Zbigniew Konojacki announced today the release and general availability of 4MLinux 46 as the latest stable version of this mini Linux distribution featuring the lightweight JWM window manager.
  • 4MLinux 46 is here more than five months after 4MLinux 45 to integrate the 4MServer edition into the main 4MLinux edition allowing users to set a very lightweight HTTP/FTP server, based on BusyBox, Apache, MariaDB, PHP, Perl, Python, and Ruby technologies, without having to download a separate ISO image.
  • Powered by the Linux 6.6 LTS kernel and Mesa 24.0.4 graphics stack, this release also introduces new features like support for RAW image files from digital cameras (CRW/CR2, NEF, RAF, DNG), support for Windows Enhanced Metafiles (EMF images), and support for new apps, including DVDAuthor, VCDImager, and qv4l2.
  • It also improves support for old audio formats originating from Amiga, Commodore, and similar platforms, adds the classic GNU Go to the 4MLinux GamePack downloadable package, and introduces support for the latest GTK 4 toolkit to support modern apps.
  • Updated default apps in 4MLinux 46 include LibreOffice 24.8, AbiWord 3.0.5, GIMP 2.10.38, Gnumeric 1.12.57, Mozilla Firefox 124.0, Google Chrome 128.0.6613.84, Mozilla Thunderbird 115.12.2, Audacious 4.4, VLC 3.0.21, SMPlayer 24.5.0, and Wine 9.12.
  • You can download 4MLinux 46 as Full and Core editions from the distro’s official website. 4MLinux is only available for 64-bit systems and uses the JWM (Joe’s Window Manager) as the default graphical environment. Check out the release announcement page for more details about 4MLinux 46.

— Play Security Transition Bumper —

Security and Privacy

10 minutes

• “Something has gone seriously wrong,” dual-boot systems warn after Microsoft update – Eric?
  • Last Tuesday (August 13), loads of Linux users—many running packages released as early as this year—started reporting their devices were failing to boot. Instead, they received a cryptic error message that included the phrase: “Something has gone seriously wrong.”
  • The cause: an update Microsoft issued as part of its monthly patch release. It was intended to close a 2-year-old vulnerability in GRUB, an open source boot loader used to start up many Linux devices. The vulnerability, with a severity rating of 8.6 out of 10, made it possible for hackers to bypass secure boot, the industry standard for ensuring that devices running Windows or other operating systems don’t load malicious firmware or software during the bootup process. CVE-2022-2601 was discovered in 2022, but for unclear reasons, Microsoft patched it only last Tuesday.
  • Tuesday’s update left dual-boot devices—meaning those configured to run both Windows and Linux—no longer able to boot into the latter when Secure Boot was enforced. When users tried to load Linux, they received the message: “Verifying shim SBAT data failed: Security Policy Violation. Something has gone seriously wrong: SBAT self-check failed: Security Policy Violation.” Almost immediately support and discussion forums lit up with ​​reports of the failure.
  • “Note that Windows says this update won’t apply to systems that dual-boot Windows and Linux,” one frustrated person wrote. “This obviously isn’t true, and likely depends on your system configuration and the distribution being run. It appears to have made some linux efi shim bootloaders incompatible with microcrap efi bootloaders (that’s why shifting from MS efi to ‘other OS’ in efi setup works). It appears that Mint has a shim version that MS SBAT doesn’t recognize.”
  • The reports indicate that multiple distributions, including Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Zorin OS, and Puppy Linux, are all affected. Microsoft has yet to acknowledge the error publicly, explain how it wasn’t detected during testing, or provide technical guidance to those affected. Company representatives didn’t respond to an email seeking answers.
  • Microsoft’s bulletin for CVE-2022-2601 explained that the update would install an SBAT—a Linux mechanism for revoking various components in the boot path—but only on devices configured to run only Windows. That way, Secure Boot on Windows devices would no longer be vulnerable to attacks that loaded a GRUB package that exploited the vulnerability. Microsoft assured users their dual-boot systems wouldn’t be affected, although it did warn that devices running older versions of Linux could experience problems.
  • “The SBAT value is not applied to dual-boot systems that boot both Windows and Linux and should not affect these systems,” the bulletin read. “You might find that older Linux distribution ISOs will not boot. If this occurs, work with your Linux vendor to get an update.”
  • In fact, the update has been applied to devices that boot both Windows and Linux. That not only includes dual-boot devices but also Windows devices that can boot Linux from an ISO image, a USB drive, or optical media. What’s more, many of the affected systems run recently released Linux versions, including Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian 12.6.0.
  • With Microsoft maintaining radio silence, those affected by the glitch have been forced to find their own remedies. One option is to access their EFI panel and turn off secure boot. Depending on the security needs of the user, that option may not be acceptable. A better short-term option is to delete the SBAT Microsoft pushed out last Tuesday. This means users will still receive some of the benefits of Secure Boot even if they remain vulnerable to attacks that exploit CVE-2022-2601. The steps for this remedy are outlined here (thanks to manutheeng for the reference).
  • The specific steps are:
  • 1. Disable Secure Boot
    2. Log in and open a terminal
    3. Delete the SBAT policy with:sudo mokutil –set-sbat-policy delete
    4. Reboot your PC and log back in to update the SBAT policy
    5. Reboot and then re-enable secure boot in your BIOS.
  • The incident is the latest to underscore what a mess Secure Boot has become, or possibly always was. Over the past 18 months, researchers have unearthed at least four vulnerabilities that can be exploited to completely neuter the security mechanism.
  • The prior most recent instance was the result of test keys used to authenticate Secure Boot on roughly 500 device models. The keys were prominently marked with the words “DO NOT TRUST.”
  • “At the end of the day, while Secure Boot does make booting Windows more secure, it seems to have a growing pile of flaws that make it not quite as secure as it’s intended to be,” said Will Dormann, a senior vulnerability analyst at security firm Analygence. “SecureBoot gets messy in that it’s not a MS-only game, though they have the keys to the kingdom. Any vulnerability in a SecureBoot component might affect a SecureBoot-enabled Windows-only system. As such, MS has to address/block vulnerable things.”
• Stealthy ‘sedexp’ Linux malware evaded detection for two years joe
  • from Bleeping Computer
  • A stealthy Linux malware named ‘sedexp’ has been evading detection since 2022 by using a persistence technique not yet included in the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
  • The malware was discovered by risk management firm Stroz Friedberg, an Aon Insurance company, and enables its operators to create reverse shells for remote access and to further the attack.
  • “At the time of this writing, the persistence technique used (udev rules) is not documented by MITRE ATT&CK,” the researchers note, highlighting that sedexp is an advanced threat that hides in plain sight.
  • ‘udev’ is a device management system for the Linux kernel responsible for handling device nodes in the /dev directory, which contains files that represent the hardware components available on the system such as storage drives, network interfaces, and USB drives.
  • Node files are dynamically created and removed when the user connects/disconnects devices, while udev also handles the loading of appropriate drivers.
  • Udev rules are text configuration files that dictate how the manager should handle certain devices or events, located in ‘/etc/udev/rules.d/’ or ‘/lib/udev/rules.d/.’
  • These rules contain three parameters that specify its applicability (ACTION== “add”), the device name (KERNEL== “sdb1″), and what script to run when the specified conditions are met (RUN+=”/path/to/script”).
  • The sedexp malware adds the following udev rule on compromised systems:
    • ACTION==”add”, ENV{MAJOR}==”1″, ENV{MINOR}==”8″, RUN+=”asedexpb run:+”
  • This rule triggers whenever a new device is added to the system, checking if its major and minor numbers match ‘/dev/random,’ which is loaded upon system boot and used as a random number generator by multiple apps and system processes.
  • The final rule component (RUN+= “asedexpb run:+”) executes the malware’s script ‘asedexpb,’ so by setting /dev/random as a precondition, the attackers ensure the malware is run frequently.
  • Most importantly, /dev/random is an essential system component on Linux that security solutions do not monitor. Hence, its abuse guarantees evasion for the malware.
  • The malware names its process’ kdevtmpfs,’ which mimics a legitimate system process, further blending in with normal activities and making it harder to detect using conventional methods.
  • Regarding its operational capabilities, the malware uses either forkpty or pipes and a forked new process to set up a reverse shell for the attacker to remotely access the infected device.
  • Sedexp also employs memory manipulation techniques to hide any file containing the string “sedexp” from standard commands like ‘ls’ or ‘find,’ concealing its presence on the system.
  • It can also modify memory contents to inject malicious code or alter the behavior of existing apps and system processes.
  • The researchers mention that the malware has been used in the wild since at least 2022. They found it present in many online sandboxes and without being detected (on VirusTotal only two antivirus engines flag as malicious the three sedexp samples available in the report).
  • According to Stroz Friedberg, the malware has been used to hide credit card scraping code on a web server compromised web servers, indicating involvement in financially motivated attacks.

— Play Wanderings Transition Bumper —

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

30 minutes (~5-8 mins each)

• Joe
  • One of the listeners of one of my other shows sent me a Likebook Mars that needs a new microSD port. It is actually a well built device and I have received and I have found my box of ports and I will be putting it together soon. I was looking for my solder wick but just ordered some more.
  • I did end up working on this device while on stream with the LUGcast and I will discuss it on TLLTS and how it was fixed. I don’t want to spoil it since the person that sent it did request me to talk about it there
  • In the past I have talked about the Razer Nari Ultimates that I have been fixing and that I really enjoy using. Well even after buying used USB dongles for them which either did not work or only worked for a short time. In the past I had seen a fix for it that involved bridging a resettable fuse that has a tendency to go out. Previously I had decided not to try it because of how incredibly tiny and daunting this fix is.
  • Plus I have my concerns about bridging a fuse but I decided to throw caution to the wind and give it a shot. I was not able to bridge across the top of the fuse the way the write up showed but I was able to remove the fuse and replace it with a very thin wire. I am happy to say that it works very well and I will be trying it again on some of the other ones that I have. I think that this will work for them even though they are working a little differently than this one was.
  • This one was not showing up as connected at all before I did the fix. The other two that I have will connect and disconnect intermittently but since it is a resettable fuse that may still be the issue.
  • I have also done a lot of 3-d printing in the last couple of weeks. I pulled the white PLA and switched back to a black. I reprinted some d-handles for my workout equipment. They work really well. They are thicker than the commercial ones and despite being made out of PLA they are more than strong enough for the couple hundred pounds of pressure that I put on them. I also published it to Thingiverse. My first item. I want to add a couple more photos to the Thingiverse page but i am happy for now and i will be going back through my TinkerCAD and deciding what else to publish as well. Some of them are remixes and I kind of feel bad because I haven’t tracked where I got them from because I wasn’t ever really planning on publishing them. Some of them are also remixed from multiple other designs and there is no way to directly attribute that. But I do want to get them out there anyway
  • I also designed and printed a replacement front stop for my laptop cooler that had broken. It did not take me very long at all to measure and design and it took longer to print than any thing else. It worked really well and my laptop is now much more stable.
  • I also found and started printing some stackable Gridfinity baskets to help clean up my work area again. Also a jig to hold wires for soldering that has a base that fits into the gridfinity baskets
  • I finally finished putting together that DAS I was working on before and got it hooked up to my computer. Kinda had to since my other store bought one died and I needed to hook up my 12Tb drive, one of the drives that my Plex is using. The PCI card went right in and does not block the airflow for the graphics card which was one of my concerns.
  • Also hooked up the 3 drives that Bill gave me and wiped them. I will probably be replacing those drives as I get larger ones but for now they are working good. Thank you Bill. I will also be getting another cable so that I can hook up 4 more drives.
  • I also was able to hire a person to come out and dispose of some of the things in my back yard. A lot of the branches that I could not cut down any further into firewood and some old boards left over from some wooden lawn furniture. Plus a couple of other things from that were no longer needed. Still cost me less than to have the tree out front done by someone else. Since they were going to be here anyway I decided to do a garage clean out with the 3 day weekend that I had. Mostly old irrelevant projects and things I did not need any more from the garage. Laptops and tablets that were beyond repair, cables that went to nothing that type of thing. Cleared up a lot of space in my garage for working out and for new projects.
• Moss
  • Another rough few weeks. My wife lost her health insurance – the Health Insurance Marketplace said we don’t make enough money to qualify for the federal subsidy for ACA, so, nothing. Suzanne is clearly thinking about going back to Canada, not my fault.
  • I’ve been fighting a bad cold for the past week. Hope I don’t sound too bad, and I got FCWN 383 recorded before my throat was at it worst, and it’s lots better today. Thank you, Bird Dog Blackberry Whisky, best gargle ever.
  • My PineTime appears to be dead. Or is it the charging cradle? I don’t know. I might have to send it to one of you guys to check it out. I don’t want to spend another $9.95 plus shipping to get another charging cradle, and my wife wouldn’t approve that, nor would she approve me getting another PineTime at this juncture. However, I was surprised to receive an email from Pine64 with an RMA to return the watch, and sent it back on Sept 4.
  • We went to a friend’s house in South Carolina for a house filk. There were 5 performers (six if you count a singing couple as individuals) and enough listening ears to make it real. Had a wonderful time, I can’t recall seeing Suzanne smile so much as she did. I took Lenore (my Enya NexG pseudoacoustic guitar) and Carlos (my Spanish classical).
  • I took my PineTab 2 with me to show off to one of my filking friends. It was going pretty well until it would not bring up the dialog box to login to wifi. I was crushed. When I got home, I reflashed DanctNix Linux, the original Arch-based Linux which came on the tablet, and it seems to be working again, plus updates of the kernel made it work a bit better, i.e., I no longer have to turn wifi off before booting down.
  • I *finally* got another work day at school, that’s two this school term. I believe the jobs will be coming more frequently now, at least until winter holiday. The kids love me, I get comments every day I work about how they wished I would be their sub more frequently.
  • No news on my computer distrohopping. I seem to be settled on both my machines with multiple distros; my desktop has Mint MATE, Bodhi, and neon, while my laptop has Mint MATE, Bodhi, and Feren. My wife’s laptop(s) and the TV machine are still running just Mint MATE. All Mint versions are 22. I would like to replace one of the Bodhi installations with DeBodhi but haven’t gotten motivated to do that, or to decide which machine gets the Deb.
  • I would like to announce that Full Circle Weekly News is now carried on Spotify and YouTube, in addition to the feed to your podcatcher. This should get more ears on the show, and is a Good Thing(TM).
• Majid
  • So I spent most of August in India visiting family. Bangalore and Pune were the cities I went to. Whilst I hate the long-haul flights there and back, I did enjoy the holiday, was nice meeting everyone and being able to chill out. I tried to disengage as much as I could have from work, however it caught up with me when one of our junior doctors suddenly passed away from a bad pneumonia. Of course there wasn’t much I could do from India, but I was able to give some support to the other juniors who had worked with her.
  • Speaking of junior doctors, I met one of my cousins in India who has just qualified as a doctor. She was wanting some career advice, hopefully I’ve converted someone else to Anaesthesiology! She may even decide to work in the UK as competition in India is so high.
  • Just a quick word on India and tech. Android is king here, the range of devices is much more extensive with everything at different price points. Also nearly every transaction is contactless with UPI. This is an open-source standard from connecting bank accounts to your phone, and then being able to pay by scanning a QR code. Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay and some of the companies supporting this and its so widespread (even fruit stalls!) that I was a little handicapped relying on cash and tap-and-go. Its a bit more difficult for foreigners to register as you need an Indian bank account. India really is a digital-native place. So many services and things rely on having a smartphone, its a real necessity. Best things are the services, there was one called Blinkit and Swiggy which would get you groceries or pick up and drop food deliveries, 10min max! Used it to the max!
  • From a Linux viewpoint, I had installed Mint 22 Cinnamon on my main laptop before going to India so I would get a good few weeks with it. I couldn’t get along with Cinnamon, it lasted about a week. I think I’ve got used to the eye candy, touchpad gestures, and general “modern-ness” of GNOME and KDE. So after a week I decided to install Gnome on it. Now I basically have an Ubuntu install without the Ubuntu extensions (or snap). I don’t know whether its Gnome, Wayland support or whatever, but the machine does feel snappier and more performant, which was a little surprising given how lightweight Cinnamon is these days. I did want to keep both on, but the fact I had 2 file managers (Files and Nemo) was tickling my OCD, so I uninstalled Nemo, which ended up uninstalling Cinnamon. Hey Ho, another Frankenstein-Ubuntu!
  • I got rid of the Surface 3 laptop which I had got off eBay as I had some difficulties installing Linux on it. I know there were some workarounds, but the seller was happy to offer a return, which I accepted. This means for the first time in years, I only have one laptop (#firstworldproblems). Was tempted by one of the new snapdragon laptops, but Linux support is lacking on them, would be a very expensive experiment!
  • Speaking of new chips, I saw some of the coverage of the new Lunar Lake intel chips. I must say they are looking amazing. With those improvements and the new AMD Ryzen AI chips, things looking exciting in this space. This is what we need in the industry, true competition spurring development.
  • I am still getting used to my NAS, now having all my media and backups on it, next is to run either Plex or Jellyfin to make it a media streamer.
  • The S24 Ultra was great whilst travelling, took some really good pictures in challenging situations. Having said that, I am a little tempted by the new Honor Magic v3 foldable.
  • Since I was traveling, I took a variety of headphones/earbuds so that I could survive the traveling. I learnt a few things. First I got the Ear Fun Pro over-ear headphones. They were as good as my Sony XM4s for a third of the price. I took my Samsung Buds FE, and they survived a drop into standing water!. And I took some Soundcore P30s, which were amazingly good for only $40, almost disposable, also had a useful phone stand as part of the case.
  • Since I’m talking headphones, really enjoyed the new Linkin Park song, its a brave new era, and I’m excited for it. Also a new Manic Street Preachers song and album announced.
  • Oh and Oasis are getting back together! My 17yr old son is a massive fan, and me being a xillenial (born in 1980 therefore in between Gen X and Millennial), they were a massive part of my formative years. I couldn’t get tickets, but enjoyed the new 30^th anniversary edition of Definitely Maybe (with its first takes, and outtakes from the original recording sessions
  • Managed to get through the Umbrella Academy final season. Good ending. Also got through Vikings Valhalla which while was good, left it at a narrative place that really needs another season….except its been canceled. Thanks Netflix.
  • Started The Perfect Couple on Netflix with the wife, and its good frothy fun. Switch off brain TV. Not to impressed with Rings of Power though.
  • And a cat update, the cat we were minding for my daughters friend is now officially ours. Simba (yes I did a Lion King joke!)
• Eric
  • I’m coming into week three of COVID and it has been hugely disruptive. I know a lot of you have had it but this is my first time. The additional fatigue has been a challenge to deal with on top of what I already do with my long term health issues. It’s just something I have to handle as gracefully as I can, which in many cases means just not getting much of anything done. Case in point, my wanderings are going to be sparse.
  • This group got me all excited to try a PineTime, PINE64’s smartwatch. I’ll get into it more in the Innards but suffice to say that, for the price, it’s an impressive piece of technology. It took longer than I had hoped to receive it but it did ship from China so I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised. The tracking system was about as clear as mud so I had no idea at any point when to expect delivery. But, it made it and I’ve been wearing it for a little over two weeks. It’s my first smartwatch and I have some thoughts (Innards…hint hint)
  • Unfortunately, I missed episode 444.5 of mintCast (Home, Home On The LAN), which is something that I had wanted to talk about in relation to upgrading my own LAN. I’ve listened to part of it but need to finish it and then make a plan for what I’d like to do. I appreciate everyone taking the time to share their setups. If you haven’t heard the episode, you definitely should go check it out.
  • I read yesterday that we have received more than twice the usual rainfall here in my part of Florida. It normally rains just over 20 inches between June 1st and August 31st where this year we have received just over 47 inches. We received 23.55 inches of rain in August alone, compared with the normal total of 9.11 inches. The figure doesn’t include rainfall that was not captured on August 5th because of equipment failure, but local rain gauges indicate that 3-4 inches of rain on that date would increase the total August and summer rainfall even more, potentially to an astonishing 51 inches in total. So, when I say we get a lot of rain, it isn’t hyperbole. Oh, also, the average high temperature was 94 degree so yeah, sauna time. I’m so ready for Fall.

— Play Innards Transition Bumper —

Linux Innards

30 minutes (~5-8 minutes each)

• Wearables
  • Topics
    • Watches
    • rings
    • glasses
      • VR/AR
      • Audio
      • Displays
    • wrist adapters for phones
    • bluetooth headsets
    • wearable mouse keyboard TAP
  • Joe
  • Eric
    • PINE64 PineTime
      • The hardware is very good for the price
      • The software is ho hum
  • Majid
    • I’ve used a lot of smartwatches! Galaxy, Mobvoi, Oneplus. Wear OS vs Tizen
    • What do I use it for? Well that has evolved. Notification screening, timers, controlling media, health tracking.
    • Most important factor is battery life. Hence I love my Oneplus Watch
  • Moss
    • I know I’m among the last to adopt new tech. I’ve had a few smart watches purchased from Wish.com that were too loud, too intrustive, and just too much, plus didn’t work all that well. They only worked with certain super-popular apps, none of which I use.
    • But when I saw I could get a PineTime for $25, about the same price as a cheap watch on Wish, I was hooked. I’ve been lusting over the entire Pine64 catalog for years, and have managed to acquire a PineTab2.
    • I eventually received my PineTime (7/9). I set it up on its charger until it was fully charged. It had the wrong time. I downloaded FDroid and Gadgetbridge. I don’t think I got all settings changed as suggested but hit the wall. It does not connect to my phone, and still has the wrong time. I posted for help to the PineTime channel.
    • My phone says the PineTime is connected, but the Gadgetbridge app does not, and says I have an App Notification setting to change which I can’t get changed (ghosted). I was unable to fix this.
    • On 7/10 I tried connecting it to my desktop computer. I downloaded a copy of Siglo and ran it. Success! I got to update the firmware from 1.0.0 to 1.9.0, set the time and change some other settings.
    • I discovered after the fact that 1.10.0 was not an upgrade of 1.1.0, but rather came after 1.9.0, which means that I could have used 1.14.0. I have tried downloading and installing that, but it does not want to see it as a file. Perhaps if I downgraded it to 1.0.0…?
    • After enjoying – and I mean REALLY enjoying — my PineTime for 5 weeks, it stopped working. The intrusion level was near zero, and the things I got to work worked really well. It would read the apps I use, rather than expecting me to use certain apps, and is very Linuxy.
    • I have not been able to determine whether the problem is with the watch or the charger.
    • If I move forward, I note that Siglo is now using a discontinued version of GTK. I hope they updated it.
    • On 9/3, I was surprised by an email from Pine64 offering me an RMA to send the PineTime back to them. I mailed it on the 4^th, hope to get another watch soon. I wonder whether my email tagline, showing all my Linux podcasts, had any effect on them making the offer?
    • I will have more when I get a response from Pine64. I expect to do a quickie HPR episode on my experience.

— Play Vibrations Transition Bumper —

Vibrations from the Ether

20 minutes (~5 minutes each)

— Play Check This Transition Bumper —

Check This Out

10 minutes

• Moss – I was listening to HPR Episode 4194, where I learned that ext filesystems reserve 5% of each drive for the root user. 5% of your drive might be 50 Mb or more… If you want to reclaim this space for your use, run
  • df -h
    • to identify your drives and
  • sudo tune2fs -m 1 /dev/sdax
    • to set the percentage lower ( -m 1 makes it 1%, -m 2 is 2%, etc.)

Housekeeping & Announcements

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

Send us email at [email protected]

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Chat with us on Telegram and Discord,

Or post directly at https://mintcast.org

• Next Episode – 2 pm US Central time on Sunday, September 15, 2024.
• Get mintCast converted to your time zone
• for 445 Next Roundtable Live Stream – 2 pm US Central time on Saturday, September 7, 2024.
• Get the Roundtable Live Stream converted to your time zone
• for 445.5 Next Roundtable Live Stream – 2 pm US Central time on Saturday, September 21, 2024.
• 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], occasionally on HPR
• 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] @[email protected], AtypicalDr on Instagram and Threads and The Atypical Doctor Podcast on Spotify and also Linux OTC.
• Eric – You can hear and see me on the Distrohoppers’ Digest and Linux OTC podcasts as well as the Linux Saloon and LinuxLUGCast streams. I can be reached by email at [email protected].

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

• Bill 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 —