Welcome to mintCast

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

This is Episode 447!

This is Episode 447.5!

Recorded on Sunday, September 29, 2024.

… Joe; right on PineTime, I’m Moss; There’s no place like home, I’m Bill; confused, I’m Majid; Eric; and special guest, Ken McConnell

— Play Standard Intro —

• First up in the news: Linux Kernel 6.11 released, Intel spins off its foundry business, Real Time comes to Linux, Qualcomm wants to buy Intel, WP Engine faces off against Automattic, Nvidia publishes open source Linux vGPU driver, Proton finishes open-sourcing all its apps,
• In security and privacy: Kaspersky deletes itself and inserts UltraAV,
• Then in our Wanderings: Bill goes loco(l), Majid folds, Moss goes Full Circle, Joe , Eric , and Ken
• and Happy 41^st Birthday GNU!

• In our Innards section: we visit with author Ken McConnell
• And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
• 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

— Play News Transition Bumper —

The News

20 minutes

• Linux Kernel 6.11 Officially Released, Here’s What’s New -Majid
  • from 9 to 5 Linux
  • Linus Torvalds announced the release and general availability of Linux kernel 6.11, the latest stable version of the Linux kernel that introduces several new features and improvements, on September 15th.
  • Highlights of Linux 6.11 include a new driver subsystem to enable support upstream for Bluetooth/WLAN chips on Qualcomm platforms, getrandom() support to vDSO on x86 systems adding a new kind of mapping to mmap(2) that lets the kernel zero out pages anytime under memory pressure, virtual CPU hotplug support for AArch64 (ARM64) ACPI systems, and a new mechanism to create interrupt domains.
  • Also new is a dmaengine_prep_peripheral_dma_vec() function to support transfers using dma vectors and documentation and user in AXI dma, along with STMicro STM32 DMA3 support, support for a minimum version for the Rust toolchain, support for the Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake CPU platforms, Loongson-3 CPUFreq driver support, fast CPPC support in the amd-pstate cpufreq driver, and hwmon interface support to the ACPI fan driver.
  • On top of that, Linux kernel 6.11 updates KVM support for the LoongArch architecture with ParaVirt steal time support, perf kvm-stat support, and some VM migration enhancements, enables KVM halt poll shrinking by default, rewrites the disk accounting scheme for the bcachefs file system to store accounting as normal btree keys, and implements NFS server-side support for the new pNFS NVMe layout type.
  • There’s also support for block drivers written in Rust, a dedicated bucket slab allocator that protects against heap-spraying attacks, initial support for AMD’s SEV-SNP secure encrypted virtualization mechanism, Rust abstractions for firmware loading, as well as memory hotplug support and STACKLEAK support for the RISC-V architecture.
  • Linux kernel 6.11 also brings a unified VMware hypercall API layer to provide for adding API support for confidential computing solutions, a new logic behind the background block group reclaim, automatic removal of cgroup after removing a subvolume, and new ‘rescue=’ mount options for the Btrfs file system, NUMA support for RISC-V ACPI-based systems, as well as many updated and new drivers for better hardware support.
  • Linux kernel 6.11 will be another short-lived branch supported for only a few months. It will be succeeded by Linux kernel 6.12, whose merge window has now been officially opened by Linus Torvalds and which should be the next long-term supported (LTS) kernel series due out in mid or late November 2024.
  • You can download Linux kernel 6.11 right now from Linus Torvalds’ git tree or the kernel.org website if you fancy compiling it on your GNU/Linux distribution. However, it is highly recommended that you wait before Linux 6.11 arrives in your distro’s stable software repositories before updating the kernel.
• Intel frees its Foundry biz
  • from The Register
  • Intel will spin out its Foundry division as an independent subsidiary with its own board, in the hopes of bringing in new sources of capital for the ailing business unit.
  • The decision, announced in a Monday letter penned by CEO Pat Gelsinger, comes just months after Chipzilla made the Foundry division a separate line item on its financial disclosures.
  • Gelsinger, who has taken considerable flak for Foundry’s mounting losses in recent quarters, claims the decision to establish the division as a subsidiary will offer multiple benefits.
  • “It provides our external Foundry customers and suppliers with clearer separation and independence from the rest of Intel,” he wrote. “It also gives us future flexibility to evaluate independent sources of funding and optimize the capital structure of each business to maximize growth.”
  • The move also provides a more immediate benefit for Intel’s shareholders: getting the division’s operating losses off Intel’s books. In Q2 alone Intel Foundry racked up $2.8 billion in operating losses. That dismal performance has spurred multiple class action lawsuits alleging Gelsinger and CFO David Zinsner misled investors about the health of the business unit.
  • While Intel Foundry will function more like a standalone business, Gelsinger stressed the subsidiary’s leadership who will continue to report directly to him.
  • In some respects, the decision mirrors AMD’s decision – back in 2008 – to spin off its own foundry unit, which later became GlobalFoundries. AMD has since transitioned most of its foundry work to Taiwan’s TSMC.
  • Intel’s product division already makes heavy use of TSMC for its GPUs, NICs, and AI accelerators. Two weeks ago the silicon titan also outsourced client CPUs, following the decision to ditch its 20A process technology to focus on ramping production of its mass market 18A node.
  • Amazon hedges bets on Intel 18A
  • Speaking of Intel’s next-gen process tech, the chipmaker announced it is “co-investing” with AWS for the development of an AI fabric chip built on 18A under a “multi-year, multi-billion-dollar framework.”
  • Intel didn’t provide specifics on the chip, but it appears that making the silicon stateside is a key element of the deal. The x86 giant specifically called out the state of Ohio, where it is building out a pair of leading edge fabs and where AWS is investing $7.8 billion to expand its datacenter footprint.
  • “By co-developing next-generation AI fabric chips in Intel 18A, we continue our long-standing collaboration, dating back to 2006 when we launched the first Amazon EC2 instance featuring their chips,” Matt Garman, recently appointed CEO of AWS, explained in a canned statement.
  • Intel also revealed it would produce a custom version of its Xeon 6 processor, built on its existing Intel 3 process node, specifically for AWS. While this may sound like special treatment, it’s not the first time Intel has offered the cloud giant customized Xeons – and it has done the same for other clouds.
  • Intel also suggested that AWS may manufacture additional infrastructure in its fabs using its upcoming 18A, 18AP, and 14A process nodes.
  • Intel Foundry scores $3B for defense chips
  • On a busy Monday, Intel also revealed it won up to $3 billion in funding under the CHIPS and Science Act to establish a secretive manufacturing program called the “Secure Enclave.”
  • The program marks Intel’s latest tie up with the Department of Defense (DoD) and aims to secure the supply of leading-edge semiconductors.
  • “Intel is proud of our ongoing collaboration with the US Department of Defense to help strengthen America’s defense and national security systems,” declared Chris George, president and general manager of Intel Federal in a canned statement.
  • While a welcome win for the embattled Foundry unit, Intel is realistically the only option for such a job – and Gelsinger seems to know it. “As the only American company that both designs and manufactures leading-edge logic chips, we will help secure the domestic chip supply chain,” he wrote.
  • The Pentagon’s reported insistence that chips built under the secretive program are manufactured in the United States by a US company limited its options from the get go. And while GlobalFoundries still produces semiconductors and other analog components, it abandoned development of leading-edge nodes back in 2018 when it scuttled its 7nm process tech.
  • While Intel was a shoo-in for the Secure Enclave project, it remains to be seen whether the decision to spin off its Foundry unit will add additional red tape for either the $3 billion defense project or the other $8.5 billion in CHIPS funding it was awarded this northern Spring.
  • While Intel prioritizes its US investments, it seems its European investment plans are stalled – or possibly over.
  • “We will pause our projects in Poland and Germany by approximately two years based on anticipated market demand,” Gelsinger wrote, adding that its Ireland fab facility would remain its “lead European hub for the foreseeable future.”
  • This suggests that Intel may do more than delay its €30 billion fab project in Magdeburg, Germany and $4.6 billion assembly and test facility in Wroclaw, Poland. Ironically, the decision to postpone the projects comes just days after the Polish government received approval from the European Commission to hand Intel $1.9 billion in state aid to fund the project.
  • It also remains unclear what a delay could mean for the €10 billion in state aid Intel persuaded the German government to hand over to support the Magdeburg plant.
  • The Register expects Europe will not fund delayed fabs – and without subsidies we can’t imagine they’ll go ahead as planned. Or, as the Germans might say: es ist fertig. (It’s finished, it’s over – Intel’s Euro-fab plans are toast.)
  • The Register has asked Intel for comment; we’ll let you know if we receive a response.
  • In addition to the delays to its German and Polish facilities, Gelsinger noted that Intel would move forward with its advanced packaging facility in Malaysia but would “align” the startup of the facility with market conditions.
  • “There are no changes to our other manufacturing locations. We remain committed to our US manufacturing investments and are moving forward with our projects in Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico, and Ohio,” Gelsinger wrote.
  • Intel’s internal alignments will also see major changes as the x86 giant consolidates its Edge and Automotive businesses into its Client Computing Group (CCG).
  • This change, Gelsinger wrote, means the two businesses will “have a big opportunity to leverage our core client business and extend our leadership in the AI PC category.”
  • Intel’s integrated photonics group will find a new home in Intel’s datacenter and AI group.
  • Finally, Intel will be integrating its software and incubation operations into its core business.
  • These consolidation efforts come as Gelsinger notes that, “through our voluntary early retirement and separation offerings, we are more than halfway to our workforce reduction target of approximately 15,000 by the end of the year.”
  • Chipzilla’s chief executive closed the letter by reiterating his belief that “this is the most significant transformation of Intel in over four decades. Not since the memory to microprocessor transition have we attempted something so essential. We succeeded then – and we will meet this moment and build a stronger Intel for decades to come.”
• Real-time Linux is officially part of the kernel after decades of debate
  • from Ars Technica
  • As is so often the case, a notable change in an upcoming Linux kernel is both historic and no big deal.
  • If you wanted to use “Real-Time Linux” for your audio gear, your industrial welding laser, or your Mars rover, you have had that option for a long time (presuming you didn’t want to use QNX or other alternatives). Universities started making their own real-time kernels in the late 1990s. A patch set, PREEMPT_RT, has existed since at least 2005. And some aspects of the real-time work, like NO_HZ, were long ago moved into the mainline kernel, enabling its use in data centers, cloud computing, or anything with a lot of CPUs.
  • But officialness still matters, and in the 6.12 kernel, PREEMPT_RT will likely be merged into the mainline. As noted by Steven Vaughan-Nichols at ZDNet, the final sign-off by Linus Torvalds occurred while he was attending Open Source Summit Europe. Torvalds wrote the original code for printk, a debugging tool that can pinpoint exact moments where a process crashes, but also introduces latency that runs counter to real-time computing. The Phoronix blog has tracked the progress of PREEMPT_RT into the kernel, along with the printk changes that allowed for threaded/atomic console support crucial to real-time mainlining.
  • What does this mean for desktop Linux? Not much. Beyond high-end audio production or replication (and even that is debatable), a real-time kernel won’t likely make windows snappier or programs zippier. But the guaranteed execution and worst-case latency timings a real-time Linux provides are quite useful to, say, the systems that monitor car brakes, guide CNC machines, and regulate fiendishly complex multi-CPU systems. Having PREEMPT-RT in the mainline kernel makes it easier to maintain a real-time system, rather than tend to out-of-tree patches.
  • It will likely change things for what had been, until now, specialty providers of real-time OS solutions for mission-critical systems. Ubuntu, for example, started offering a real-time version of its distribution in 2023 but required an Ubuntu Pro subscription for access. Ubuntu pitched its release at robotics, automation, embedded Linux, and other real-time needs, with the fixes, patches, module integration, and testing provided by Ubuntu.
  • “Controlling a laser with Linux is crazy,” Torvalds said at the Kernel Summit of 2006, “but everyone in this room is crazy in his own way. So if you want to use Linux to control an industrial welding laser, I have no problem with your using PREEMPT_RT.” Roughly 18 years later, Torvalds and the kernel team, including longtime maintainer and champion-of-real-time Steven Rostedt, have made it even easier to do that kind of thing.
• Qualcomm wants to buy Intel – Majid
  • from The Verge
  • On Friday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported Intel had been approached by fellow chip giant Qualcomm about a possible takeover. While any deal is described as “far from certain,” according to the paper’s unnamed sources, it would represent a tremendous fall for a company that had been the most valuable chip company in the world, based largely on its x86 processor technology that for years had triumphed over Qualcomm’s Arm chips outside of the phone space.
  • The New York Times corroborated the report on Friday evening, adding that “Qualcomm has not yet made an official offer for Intel.”
  • If a deal were made — and survived regulatory scrutiny — it would be a massive coup for Qualcomm, which reentered the desktop processor market this year as a part of Microsoft’s AI PC strategy after years of dominance in mobile processors.
  • Intel, meanwhile, is arguably in its weakest position in years — while many of its businesses are still profitable, the company announced substantial cuts, shifts in strategy, and a 15-plus percent downsizing of its workforce this August after reporting a $1.6 billion loss.
  • At the time, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said the company would stop all nonessential work and has since announced it will spin off its chipmaking business, a part of the company that it had long touted as a strength over rival AMD and the many fabless chipmakers that rely on entities like Taiwan’s TSMC to produce all of their actual silicon.
  • Intel, too, recently had to partially rely on TSMC to produce its most cutting-edge chips as it continues to rebuild its own manufacturing efforts (the costs of which are responsible for most of Intel’s recent losses). And its own 18A manufacturing process reportedly ran into some recent trouble.
  • While Intel’s chief rival, AMD, also had hard times over the years and had to claw its way back, gamers helped AMD every step of the way. Aside from the Nintendo Switch, whose processors are made by Nvidia, every major game console for the last decade has featured an AMD chip — and Intel reportedly lost out on a chance to change that with the future PlayStation 6.
  • Intel also recently lost some faith with PC gamers after two generations of its flagship chips were found vulnerable to strange crashes, though Intel has since agreed to extend the warranties by multiple years and issued updates that could prevent damage.
  • Many of Intel’s woes are about silicon leadership, not just manufacturing or profits — the company isn’t a big player in AI server chips yet as Nvidia dominates, nor even necessarily a notable small one like AMD. Even its attempts to produce its own GPUs for gamers and creators have yet to impress.
  • And while Qualcomm, AMD, and Apple are all still smaller players in laptops, Intel has now twice overhauled how it makes flagship laptop chips to combat the growing threat of their seeming battery life and integrated graphics advantages. We’re waiting to see if its new Lunar Lake chips succeed in October and beyond.
• WP Engine Filed Legal Action Against WordPress
  • from Search Engine Journal
  • Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic announced on Reddit that WP Engine initiated legal action against WordPress, Automattic, and Mullenweg himself. Mullenweg wrote that WordPress is countersuing.
  • WP Engine is a leading managed WordPress host provider that Mullenweg alleges is violating the WordPress trademark.
  • WP Engine’s attorney sent a Cease and Desist letter containing the following:
    • “We are litigation counsel for WP Engine and write to address the serious and repeated misconduct Automattic has directed toward WP Engine over the past several days.
    • Stunningly, Automattic’s CEO Matthew Mullenweg threatened that if WP Engine did not agree to pay Automattic – his for-profit entity – a very large sum of money before his September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, he was going to embark on a self-described “scorched earth nuclear approach” toward WP Engine within the WordPress community and beyond.
    • …Mr. Mullenweg’s covert demand that WP Engine hand over tens of millions to his for-profit company Automattic, while publicly masquerading as an altruistic protector of the WordPress community, is disgraceful. WP Engine will not accede to these unconscionable demands which not only harm WP Engine and its employees, but also threaten the entire WordPress community.
    • WP Engine has sought to do the right thing at each stage of Mr. Mullenweg’s wrongful campaign and will continue to do so, with the integrity and candor that are hallmarks of its own culture and that of many other participants in the WordPress ecosystem. Mr. Mullenweg’s words and conduct constitute actionable wrongdoing and must cease immediately.
    • III. Automattic Must Cease and Desist.
    • Mr. Mullenweg’s false, misleading, and disparaging statements are legally actionable. They were made to key members of the WordPress and broader software and technology ecosystem, including WP Engine employees and customers at WordCamp US, and were livestreamed across the world via YouTube. Among other things, Mr. Mullenweg’s words and actions threaten to – and appear intended to – harm WP Engine’s business and reputation within the WordPress community and beyond, and tortiously interfere with WP Engine’s contractual relationships with its employees and customers. “
  • Mullenweg’s comments came in a Reddit thread titled “Matt Mullenweg needs to step down from WordPress.org leadership ASAP” in which he explained his side of the issue with WP Engine.
  • He wrote that he had discussed the situation with WP Engine employees at the WordCamp WordPress conference last Friday, where he mentioned the possibility of providing attendance badges for WP Engine employees if WP Engine were banned. He added that he had been trying to resolve his issue with the company up until his closing Q&A, which turned turned into a speech about his allegations against WP Engine.
  • His description:
    • “That *if* we had to take down the WP Engine booth and ban WP Engine that evening, my colleague Chloé could print them all new personal badges if they still wanted to attend the conference personally, as they are community members, not just their company.”
  • Mullenweg insisted that he tried to resolve the conflict:
  • The entire day I was in discussions with Heather Brunner and Lee Wittlinger trying to de-escalate and resolve their trademark violations and bad behavior in the WordPress community. I returned to the booth around 4:30 PM to say that I had finally gotten a message back from Lee and Heather and was optimistic we could reach a solution so the booth would not be taken down that evening.
    • I wanted to resolve everything before my presentation on Friday afternoon, where I was either going to do normal Q&A as planned or present the case for what WP Engine has done wrong. Heather and Lee responded to my text messages, but refused to get on a call or reach any sort of verbal understanding with me, and so I delivered the presentation. I was calling both backstage literally minutes before I got on, trying to avoid this entire scenario.
    • WP Engine has now filed formal legal action against WordPress.org, myself, Automattic, and we are doing the same against them, so I may not be able to comment on this too much in the future.”
  • Other sources have taken sides on the matter. The bottom line is, Mullenweg is demanding that a company which is competing with Automattic should pay 8% of their revenues to Automattic for licensing fees of Automattic’s trademarks, when the trademarks, if any, should be property of WordPress Foundation. There is nothing in the WordPress license which requires such a license, and that Automattic is supposed to be completely separate from WordPress.org and WordPress Foundation, although currently it is a jumble with only Mullenweg, of 3 board members, being active in the WPF board.
• NVIDIA Publishes Open-Source Linux Driver Code For GPU Virtualization “vGPU” Support
  • from Phoronix
  • NVIDIA engineers have sent out an exciting set of Linux kernel patches for enabling NVIDIA vGPU software support for virtual GPU support among multiple virtual machines (VMs). In aiming for upstream-focused Linux support, this NVIDIA vGPU support is built around the adapted Nouveau driver with the code previously posted for splitting up the Nouveau/NVKM driver components.
  • A set of 29 patches under a “request for comments” flag were posted for adding vGPU support to the Nouveau NVKM driver code and then also introducing “vgpu_mgr” as a VFIO virtual GPU manager for NVIDIA GPUs. The NVIDIA vGPU approach is enterprise-focused and allows for splitting a physical GPU into virtual GPUs that can then each be assigned to multiple concurrently running virtual machines. Both Windows and Linux guest VMs are supported.
  • As for NVIDIA’s plans around this new vGPU Linux kernel driver code, in response to one of the comments on the mailing list:
  • “This is intended to be a real product that customers would use, it is not a proof of concept. There is alot of demand for this kind of simplified virtualization infrastructure in the host side. The series here is the first attempt at making thin host infrastructure and Zhi/etc are doing it with an upstream-first approach.
  • From the VFIO side I would like to see something like this merged in nearish future as it would bring a previously out of tree approach to be fully intree using our modern infrastructure. This is a big win for the VFIO world.
  • As a commercial product this will be backported extensively to many old kernels and that is harder/impossible if it isn’t exclusively in C. So, I think nova needs to co-exist in some way.”
  • Those interested in learning more can see the detailed write-up as part of the RFC patch series laying out this NVIDIA vGPU code that hopes to work its way to the mainline Linux kernel.
• All Proton Drive apps are now open source – Majid
  • from Proton Blog
  • On September 25th, Proton announced that all Proton Drive apps are now fully open source, including the Proton Drive desktop apps.
  • This milestone underscores our mission to build privacy-first solutions that you can trust. By making all our apps open source, we empower our community and the broader security sphere to inspect, verify, and trust the protections we’ve built into Proton Drive to safeguard your data.
  • Making Proton apps open source is one way they demonstrate their belief that privacy shouldn’t require blind trust. By providing full access to source code, they enable anyone to verify that their apps function as promised, delivering the security and privacy claimed.
  • Sharing the apps’ source code publicly also allows them to leverage the security community to quickly find, identify, and resolve potential vulnerabilities rather than rely on security through obscurity. Developers, security researchers, privacy advocates, and anyone who is interested can inspect any Proton Drive app. This transparency strengthens the security of our services and gives Proton users full confidence in how their data is protected.
  • Proton believes that open-source code is one of the keys to building a better internet where privacy is the default. In addition to making their apps open source, they maintain two of the most popular open-source cryptographic libraries (OpenPGP.js and GopenPGP) that make it easier for developers to secure their apps with strong encryption. They also regularly support open-source projects with our Lifetime Account Charity Fundraiser, such as WireGuard, Qubes OS, and Tails.

— Play Security Transition Bumper —

Security and Privacy

10 minutes

• Kaspersky deletes itself, installs UltraAV antivirus without warning
  • from Bleeping Computer
  • Starting Thursday 9/26, Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky deleted its anti-malware software from customers’ computers across the United States and automatically replaced it with UltraAV’s antivirus solution.
  • This comes after Kaspersky decided to shut down its U.S. operations and lay off U.S.-based employees in response to the U.S. government adding Kaspersky to the Entity List, a catalog of “foreign individuals, companies, and organizations deemed a national security concern” in June.
  • On June 20, the Biden administration also announced a ban on sales and software updates for Kaspersky antivirus software in the United States starting September 29, 2024, over potential national security risks.
  • In July, Kaspersky told BleepingComputer that it would begin closing its business and lay off the staff on July 20 because of the sales and distribution ban.
  • In early September, Kaspersky also emailed customers, assuring them they would continue receiving “reliable cybersecurity protection” from UltraAV (owned by Pango Group) after Kaspersky stopped selling software and updates for U.S. customers.
  • However, those emails failed to inform users that Kaspersky’s products would be abruptly deleted from their computers and replaced with UltraAV without warning.
  • According to many online customer reports, including BleepingComputer’s forums, UltraAV’s software was installed on their computers without any prior notification, with many concerned that their devices had been infected with malware.
  • “I woke up and saw this new antivirus system on my desktop and I tried opening kaspersky but it was gone. So I had to look up what happened because I was literally having a mini heart attack that my desktop somehow had a virus which uninstalled kaspersky somehow,” one user said.
  • To make things worse, while some users could uninstall UltraAV using the software’s uninstaller, those who tried removing it using uninstall apps saw it reinstalled after a reboot, causing further concerns about a potential malware infection.
  • Some also found UltraVPN installed, likely because they had a Kaspersky VPN subscription.
  • Not much is known about UltraAV besides being part of Pango Group, which controls multiple VPN brands (e.g., Hotspot Shield, UltraVPN, and Betternet) and Comparitech (a VPN software review website).
  • “If you are a paying Kaspersky customer, when the transition is complete UltraAV protection will be active on your device and you will be able to leverage all of the additional premium features,” UltraAV says on its official website on a page dedicated to this forced transition from Kaspersky’s software.
  • “On September 30th, 2024 Kaspersky will no longer be able to support or provide product updates to your service. This puts you at substantial risk for cybercrime.”
  • “Software update” behind forced switch to UltraAV
  • A Kaspersky employee also shared an official statement on the company’s official forums regarding the forced switch to UltraAV, saying that it “partnered with antivirus provider UltraAV to ensure continued protection for US-based customers that will no longer have access to Kaspersky’s protections.”
  • “Kaspersky has additionally partnered with UltraAV to make the transition to their product as seamless as possible, which is why on 9/19, U.S. Kaspersky antivirus customers received a software update facilitating the transition to UltraAV,” it added.
  • “This update ensured that users would not experience a gap in protection upon Kaspersky’s exit from the market.”
  • The company states that UltraAV has a similar feature set to its products and asked customers to review a FAQ page on UltraAV’s website or contact its support team for more information.
  • Update September 25, 10:43 EDT: A Pango Group spokesperson told BleepingComputer after the article was published that Kaspersky “began communicating this transition to U.S. customers on September 5” and that “users with valid email addresses received direct communications and all users had access to transition notifications in-app, on MyKaspersky account pages, and via Kaspersky Labs’ webpages.”
  • Pango Group also shared a screenshot of an in-app Kaspersky pop-up notifying customers that their “Kaspersky service will soon be moving to UltraAV” and “UltraAV protection will be automatically activated” on the device as part of this transition.
  • It’s unclear whether Kaspersky users who found UltraAV installed on their computers didn’t see this notification or were confused because it didn’t explain that Kaspersky would be uninstalled and replaced with UltraAV.
  • “Kaspersky and UltraAV are implementing the transition in waves to ensure a smooth process and to prevent any gap in protection as Kaspersky exits the market,” a Kaspersky spokesperson also told BleepingComputer.
  • “The first group of U.S. Kaspersky antivirus customers received a software update facilitating the transition on 9/17, with additional waves planned for the coming days.”

— Play Wanderings Transition Bumper —

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

30 minutes (~5-8 mins each)

• Bill
  • So this last few weeks have brought some major changes to my life. Starting with my job; as of three weeks ago, I’ve transitioned from spending 4 to 5 nights a week out on the road to being home every night, and off all weekend, every weekend. In the beginning this was all to provide some consolation to my wife who recently lost her mother. As time went on, I decided to use this time to take some steps toward improving my health. The first step was to purchase a nice NordicTrack Elyptical trainer; it’s the NordicTrack Smart Terrain 12.0. When the machine was new, it sold for more than $2,000. I picked it up on Facebook marketplace for $100. I am proud of this purchase. Some positive effects were almost immediate. Prior to the start of my new regimen, I as suffering headaches most mornings, most intensely on the weekends. That ended almost immediately. This past weekend I went in for my yearly DOT (department of transportation) physical. My blood pressure was 120/70 which is better than it’s been in well over a decade. Weight loss is happening, thought I’m not paying as close attention to it as I am the more important things. Knowing my own mind, I can tell you nothing sucks the wind out of my sails like slow weight results during intense, long term physical training. I know the weight loss will happen. I just have to keep my goals more focused on the impacts of my health. I’ve also purchased some weights and a bench to further diversify my routine. I enjoy working out, and during my younger days, I was in considerably better shape, and frequented the gym. Time being of the essence these days, and the lack of a gym near my house sort of negates the possibility of a gym membership for now. Being able to do these things at home is a must. I’m sure I’ll speak more about all of this as time goes on.
  • On a more tech-oriented note, I’ve made a few purchases to provide some audio while doing my workouts. At first I thought I’d get by with my old Galaxy Tab A (9) with a pair of wired JVC Gummy earbuds. This may have worked more long term if not for how painfully slow that particular tablet is. I decided to get some Bluetooth earbuds for my phone – a decidedly more powerful device. I wasn’t looking forward to the process, given my terrible past experiences trying to find earbuds that fit well enough to give me the bass I like when listening. My first attempt was the JLab Go Sport+ which are fine for must people, but the “over the ear” hook keeps the flanges twisted in such a way as to prevent proper sealing in the ear canal, thus causing the sound to be more “tinny.” I’ve noticed just pushing slightly from the inside of the earlobe on the back of the earbuds increases the sound quality tremendously. Unfortunately, there’s no way to stabilize the earbuds in that position given how the over the ear hooks are applying opposing pressure. During last week’s Roundtable, Joe linked me to a couple of alternative flange options. I ordered two types of replacement flanges. The triple flanges didn’t work at all, and the double flanges only slightly improved the sound quality, while introducing the problem of making the earbuds no longer able to fit in the charging case. These were clearly not the earbuds for me. Back to Amazon I go. Liking the overall sound quality for the JLabs, I decided to go with the more premium JBuds Air Pro. These were a bit of an improvement given there is no “over the ear” hook to push the earbuds out of optimal position. They still don’t go quite deep enough into the ear canal to be what I would consider stable, but they seem to be enough of an improvement to satisfy my needs. I’m quite certain the best earbuds for me are probably outside the price-point I’m willing to work with, given my needs for them are only for working out. I may upgrade in the future, but for now I’ll stick with the JLabs.
  • I’m proud to announce that after no fewer than 5 attempts, my 17 year old has finally passed his “learner’s permit” test – the first step to getting his driver’s license. This victory was hard fought, and well earned. Now I get the privilege of exponentially higher insurance premiums – such is the way of things.
  • I should like to get some feedback on the overall sound quality of our audio only version of the show. We’re trying a couple new techniques to simplify and streamline our recording and editing process. If your normally just listen to the YouTube version of the show, it may be worth checking out the audio only version. Way more effort goes into the mastering, and editing of that version of the show. We’re available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your shows from – and I mean everywhere! If you’re unsure how to navigate the process of installing a podcast player, and subscribing to the shows, let us know either by email, or by hitting up the YouTube comments. We’ll be happy to help.
• Joe
  • My Gigabit Brix mini PC. I think I was talking about that last show and how it died and was causing me to have network issues because it was running my DNS sinkhole and one of my Wireguard instances. It should have failed over to my Pi Zero, but didn’t. So I ended up going in to the router and setting the DNS to Adguard and using the router’s Wireguard instance. So this means that I currently have no Wireguard or sinkhole backup system, although I think that the pi should be working fine if I want to give it a power cycle and reset the IP on the router. Then use Adguard as the backup?
  • Anyways back to the Brix. It will not power on. I obviously wanted to check the simplest thing first and see if the power supply was working but for some reason I cannot find my multi-meter. I was able to find a cheap one on Amazon and while it is not as robust as my other one it will get me by until I find it. Having checked the power supply it is producing the correct voltage. I will have to take the computer apart and start testing. The next most obvious will be the power port.
  • I have a lot of old sets of broken helping hands and helping hands parts. They are a pretty low-cost tool, although there are some costlier ones out there. Having these parts sitting around not doing anything I decided to put them to work. So off to Tinkercad I go. Not really a difficult design since I already had simple designs to hold a heat set insert for other devices and I just needed to measure the barrel of the center of the helping hands to make a thick sturdy loop around it and place the hole for the heat set insert in such a way that tightening it down would also push on the helping hands so it won’t slip back and forth or rotate easily.
  • Then get out a large spring clamp and modify the hole at the end of the handle so that a ¼ inch drive bolt will fit through and put on a nut to hold it in place and then the 3D printed device. Now I have a table mountable set of helping hands made from old parts.
  • I want to make another but I will need to change the design as I want to use small spring clamps instead of the alligator clips that come with most helping hands. These will be better for holding in place plastic items that I want to work on instead of just holding PCBs directly.
  • My Deckmate I had previously printed broke, as did the replacement one that I had printed to work inside the docking station. This is not a problem as I can easily print another but I was thinking that I would need to change some the design to handle some of the problem spots and the expansion that happens over time but after printing another base model of the one designed for the docking station I was reminded that my 3D printer was going through some of its problems that I had previously fixed as this new print looked a lot better than the old ones and I have decided to keep it the way that it is for now and see what might need to be done in the future.
  • For those of you that don’t know, the Deckmate is a piece of kit that attaches to the back of the Steam Deck and allows you to attach modularly any device of your choosing so long as you can attach one of the spring loaded connectors to it. The connectors are difficult to print well.
  • Something is going on with the hub of my steam deck. The one that I was using started randomly disconnecting and I would have to walk up to disconnect and reconnect the HDMI. Eventually it would not stay connected for more than a few minutes. I grabbed another one and hooked it up and while the device would charge it would not connect over HDMI. That is one that I had not used for a long time and so grabbed the one that I was using on the TV in the living room. This one worked just fine. But then I took the one I had originally been using on the deck and used it to replace the one that was in the living room. It worked there. I am at a loss for what is happening. I have had no more issues with connection but I guess it could still be a problem with the cable? Its really weird, maybe something will come up later and I will have an answer.
  • Things have been going well with the new dog. He is very well behaved. Like to the point where I am unsure how to train him. He is also very quiet. Does not bark and rarely whines. I am still learning his cues about when he needs to go outside and we still have to watch him pretty closely because of it but he is getting better.
  • Twice a day walks with some long leash training either on the walk or in the back yard. It goes better when there are two of us there as stay is still an issue. But other commands are going really well. His is a more active breed and I am trying to do the best that I can by him. I think he is a bit younger than the shelter claimed and I think that some of his attachment issues probably stem from being weened too early.
• Moss
  • I did receive my replacement PineTime. It took a few days of trying stuff and talking to people, but it is now completely functional, at least to the level I prefer. I’m currently running InfiniTime 1.14.0, because there was no download available for the latest version, 1.14.1.
  • I worked 3 days in the past two weeks. It has been a while since I worked more than one day in a pay period, and I would have had 4 days except some silly hurricane came by which closed local schools.
  • Speaking of Helene, we barely got hit here in the Knoxville area. Some minor flooding in a few areas, lots of very small areas of power outage but nothing area-wide. We had no power outage at my place. It looks like western North Carolina got hit much harder than we did, and the NC DOT closed virtually all the roads in that area on Friday.
  • I fell behind by a week with Full Circle Weekly News, as ErikTheUnready, my source for news, suffered a hospitalization. As of Friday, I am caught up again. I recorded both shows on Wednesday, edited #384 on Thursday and #385 on Friday. It’s up to Ronnie as to when they get published.
  • I am putting a box together for Joe, we all know how much he likes fixing things. I should get it out sometime in the next week.
  • I am preparing my twofer for January’s GAFilk. (Everyone who wants to, within a limit somewhere around 15-20 people, get a chance to perform on the main stage for two songs or 10 minutes. Several of my previous performances are to be found on my YouTube page, bardmoss.) The older I get, the more I start worrying about being forgotten, so I find songs that expose those feelings and hope to touch others.
• Majid
  • Not the most exciting few weeks for me, just getting back into the swing of work and stuff after my holiday in India last month. Started planning the next holiday straight after getting back
  • I’ve been playing around with my NAS, trying to get Plex and Jellyfin working on it. Haven’t managed to, I either the fact that I’m using Synology Quickconnect is interfering with the setup. It just shows how much of a beginner I am with this stuff!
  • Found a good deal on a Lenovo Miix Tablet. I’m a big fan of these devices, having had a good number of them (and Lenovos in general). Managed to get a “without OS” model for only 65 quid. It works really well, but the battery life isnt very good. It does limit what I use it for, as it drain quickly and charges slowly. Cant really use suspend on it. I mean again for the price I shouldn’t be surprised/complain. Running Ubuntu 24.04. GNOME is best for these touchscreens.
  • Interestingly still running Aurora on the podcasting rig. Most stable distro I’ve used for a long time.
  • So, I got bitten by the “foldable” bug when in India. My brother-in-law has a Galaxy Z Fold 5, and I liked the form factor. Was initially recommended the OnePlus Open by Joe, but wasn’t able to find it initially so went for the fold 5. Its was a weird experience. Changed the way you use a phone. However the narrow cover screen and very reflective inner screen (as well as average cameras for the price) made me think that I should’ve listened and Joe and got a OnePlus Open. He was right, I swapped it for the OnePlus Open via Mozillion. Really really impressed! Better screen, Better cameras, doesn’t have stylus support, but overall better foldable IMHO.
  • A little word about transferring from one device to another. Apple always seen as a gold standard. Android has been pretty decent as long as you use platform agnostic services. Samsung is very seamless, so much so, it was almost as if the phone had been cloned!
  • I had seen some talk about the new Nothing Open headphones. Now they were a bit expensive for me, but I wanted to try the form factor, so found some SoundCore ones on offer for about 20 bucks. I think its something I could use at work as I’m still aware of my surroundings when taking meetings in between seeing patients.
  • Speaking of work, I am having to do quite a few extra sessions as the department is so short. We’ve had a few people leave, and others having significant life events. We are head-hunting for new staff, but even if successful, it would be a good few months before they cant start in clinical practice. I’ve been offered a higher role in managing the Resident Doctors, but just managing the ones at our hospital is enough for me!
  • getting lots of email.spam, trying to move away from outlook to see if that helps.
  • Linkin Park singles…just wow! Also heard a cover of Somebody to Love which is living rent-free in my brain.
  • Finished The Perfect Couple. Good trashy TV. Watching Nightsleeper on BBC iPlayer. Worth a watch. RIngs of Power has picked up (for me). First episode of the Penguin was good (if a little long-winded). 2^nd series of the new Frasier is a pleasant 90s style sitcom. Started some anime-flavoured content (Twilight of the Gods, Terminator Zero). Watched first every Bake-off episode as one of our admin staff is a contestant. ITS JUST A CAKE!!!
• Eric
  • I am finally over COVID and whatever other infection I had as well so am finally not feeling sick in almost five weeks. For lack of a better way to say it, I was genuinely sick of being sick!
  • Hurricane Helene decided to dominate a large part of my week, along with the numerous medical appointments I’ve had so there wasn’t much time for anything else.
  • Normally, I leave if I’m in the path of a hurricane but if I stay, I make some basic preparations. It’s not likely that my house will flood and most of the larger trees around me have been taken out by previous storms so really, the biggest inconvenience of a storm is likely being without power. I’d like to have solar panels or a generator of some kind but I don’t have the means for those options so I have several backup battery devices to charge electronics. I could use my car as well for charging. We have a supply of fresh water and non-perishable food, just in case but it’s hard to know exactly what you’ll need because these storms are so unpredictable. I suppose it’s the price you pay for living in this area. Fortunately, we didn’t have any damage nor did we lose power. There is still quite a lot of debris like tree branches and leaves to clean up but that’s a very minor thing compared to those poor people in the path of this storm. I’ll be happy when hurricane season is over.
  • I spent a little more time with COSMIC and continue to find the things that are missing at this point. It’s a daunting task to create a new desktop environment. There are so many small pieces of functionality that need to be accounted for. The one that I got stuck on this week was the lack of custom keyboard shortcuts. The UI for it is there but the underlying functionality isn’t in place so it’s non-functional for now. This is one of many things that I’ve found. I am not complaining because one, it’s an alpha, and two, the parts that are there work very well. I can imagine in a few years time, possibly less, that COSMIC will be something really special that may supersede other more established options as the default DE on some distributions, perhaps even major ones. System76 has shown an impressive level of commitment and could prove a better partner to deal with than some of the more established DEs.
• Ken
  • Last week I went to the BSU football game with my sons and we had a great time, the home team won big and we got to see our seconds and thirds play in the second half. The new sound system at Albertson’s Stadium was loud and much better than the old one.
  • I found a technical FAQ on the System76 site that showed me how to reset my PulseAudio drivers and that allowed me to get my new SM-57 microphone to work in Discord. Here’s the link, as it probably applies to any Debian based OS. https://support.system76.com/articles/audio/ I’m currently using Pop_OS, on my ThinkPad P-14S.
  • [Save this for the Innards?] I’m continuing to proof read the ninth book in the Corvette series. I use my new Kobo Color Libra ebook reader with a digital pen to mark up any edits I have and then come back and make the changes in Atticus, the web-based program I use to write my novels and create ebooks with.
  • Cooler weather this week in Idaho has let me get back to the work bench in the garage. I’m detailing the topside of the Franklin model which will appear on the new cover for the re-release of Starstrikers next year. (I was not able to upload a picture to this document)
  • Circling back to my microphone, I also ordered a real nice desk top arm for it. It is an Elgato Wave Mic Arm that lets me run the cable inside of it to keep things tidy.
  • Lastly, I got double vaccinated this week for flu and Covid. I was slow moving for a day afterwards, but no ill affects. I’ll be traveling next month, so it was good to get the latest shots in time for them to be effective.

— Play Innards Transition Bumper —

Linux Innards

30 minutes (~5-8 minutes each)

• Discussion with author Ken McConnell
  • How many books have you written? One series or several?
  • What are you working on now?
  • What is your favorite editor? I started on Vi. Now I just use Gedit, unless doing a quick terminal edit, then back to Vi.
  • What is your favorite scripting language? Python for personal stuff and at work I code test automation in TypeScript with Visual Studio Code.
  • What message do your books hold for young people?
  • Talk about your model making for your book covers.
  • Are you a full time author or do you have another job?
  • How long have you been using Linux? Since the mid nineties with Red Hat. What distro? I use Pop_OS now on a ThinkPad.
  • Do you use Linux in your writing? What tools do you use (LO, etc.)
  • Do you play any instruments? Guitar.
  • What do you do “just for fun”? Follow my Cubs and Broncos. Go for drives in the mountains in my WRX.

— Play Vibrations Transition Bumper —

Vibrations from the Ether

20 minutes (~5 minutes each)

— Play Check This Transition Bumper —

Check This Out

10 minutes

• From Londoner
  • Just want to mention that on Linux User Space season 5 episode 2, one of our former hosts, Leo Chavez together with Dan Simmons, will be talking about the history of the Cinnamon desktop environment. Watch out for this podcast tomorrow (on Monday, September 30th).
  • https://www.linuxuserspace.show/
  • https://www.youtube.com/@LinuxUserSpace/videos

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, October 13, 2024.
• Get mintCast converted to your time zone
• for 447 Next Roundtable Live Stream – 2 pm US Central time on Saturday, October 5, 2024.
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• for 447.5 Next Roundtable Live Stream – 2 pm US Central time on Saturday, October 19, 2024.
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• 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].
• Ken – ken-mcconnell.com, Mastodon, Newsletter

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 —