Welcome to mintCast

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

This is Episode 457!

This is Episode 457.5!

Recorded on Sunday, March 16, 2025.

Just another Sunday im Joe; never a discouraging word, I’m Moss; “On the road again” I’m Bill; reborn, I’m Majid

— Play Standard Intro —

• First up in the news: Firefox’s new terms aren’t that bad; uBlock Origin is the Most Popular Firefox Add-on, Cloudflare bounces browsers, and PocketCast goes free;
• In security and privacy: French government rejects security backdoors, and TAILS replaces balenaEtcher with Rufus as installer for Windows
• Then in our Wanderings: Joe, Bill goes deep in the heart of Texas, Moss sings again, and Majid finally learns Audacity…sort of

• In our Innards section: Media Streaming
• In Bodhi Corner, Bodhi had added new themes and work has started on Bodhi 8, so far using Debian 12 base;
• 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 at mintcast.org/show-notes

— Play News Transition Bumper —

The News

20 minutes

• Firefox’s Updated Terms of Use Are Not As Bad As They Sound – Majid
  • from MakeUseOf
  • Mozilla has had to clarify some of the language used in the new terms of use for Firefox. This came after some users heavily criticized the overly broad language surrounding the collection and use of user data.
  • Mozilla Introduces Misunderstood Terms of Use
  • This week saw Mozilla introduce a terms of use and an updated privacy notice for its Firefox browser. Unfortunately, not everyone welcomed the updates, and instead, criticized some of the language used. In particular, this section:
    • “When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.”
  • Critics such as Brendan Eich pointed out that this language seemed to be overly broad, meaning it could allow Mozilla to use your data in unwelcome ways. With some suggesting that it could see Mozilla provide data for AI.
  • The language does indeed appear to be overly broad and open to interpretation. And that is a problem when you’re required to agree to these terms of use to use Firefox. Meaning that you have to trust that your data is not going to be used against your will.
  • Mozilla Clarifies What the Language Really Means
  • Thankfully, Mozilla was quick to respond to the backlash, and clarify what the language in the terms of use and privacy notice actually mean. It updated the original blog post with the following clarification:
    • “We need a license to allow us to make some of the basic functionality of Firefox possible. Without it, we couldn’t use information typed into Firefox, for example. It does NOT give us ownership of your data or a right to use it for anything other than what is described in the Privacy Notice.”
  • Further to this, a Mozilla spokesperson also told TechCrunch that “these changes are not driven by a desire by Mozilla to use people’s data for AI or sell it to advertisers.” Which, if taken at face value, is pretty clear.
  • AIs will run out of good-quality data by 2026, so how else can we help these tools grow and thrive?
  • As a free and open-source web browser, Firefox has always been viewed as a good option for those not keen on using products by the big companies. However, as Firefox has a market share of just 2.54 percent now, way behind Google Chrome (on 67 percent), Safari (on 17.95 percent), and Microsoft Edge (on 5.2 percent), Mozilla isn’t the force it once was.
• uBlock Origin is the Most Popular Firefox Add-on
  • From linuxiac.com (via londoner)
  • Browser add-ons play a huge role in shaping the user experience, letting people customize their browsers by adding (or removing) features to fit their needs. Firefox, one of the most popular (open-source) browsers, provides public statistics on various aspects of its usage, including which add-ons are the most popular.
  • One particularly interesting trend is the overwhelming preference for ad blockers. In fact, the top 10 most-used Firefox add-ons are almost entirely dominated by them—which might be surprising to some but totally expected to many. This is how things look at the moment.

Rank Add-on Usage
1 uBlock Origin 8.271%

2 Language: English (US) 3.581%

3 Video DownloadHelper 2.398%

4 Language: English (CA) 2.073%

5 AdBlocker Ultimate 1.972%
6 Language: English (GB) 1.874%

7 Privacy Badger 1.772%

8 Adblock Plus – free ad blocker 1.716%

9 DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials 1.611%

10 Language: Deutsch (German) 1.500%

• As the stats show, uBlock Origin, primarily used to block ads, trackers, and malicious websites, is the most popular add-on, making up 8% of all Firefox add-on usage. In the top 10, we also see two other familiar names—AdBlocker Ultimate and Adblock Plus—both offering similar features.
• Privacy Badger, as the name suggest – a privacy-focused add-on that automatically detects and blocks third-party trackers, is also among the top preferred and installed Firefox add-ons. The only exception in this category is Video DownloadHelper, currently ranked third, which lets users easily download videos from the web to their computers.
• It’s pretty obvious—users want to browse the web without annoying, intrusive ads getting in the way. But, like most things, there’s another side to the story.
• For many publishers, ads aren’t just an extra feature; they’re the primary (and sometimes only) way to make money from their content. Those ads help cover website maintenance costs and, in many cases, put food on the table. It’s a delicate, multi-layered topic—but that’s a conversation for another time.
• Now, back to the point. Firefox, being an open-source browser, naturally attracts users who care deeply about data privacy and internet freedom (though Mozilla’s recent moves have cast some doubt on this). So, it’s no surprise that privacy-focused add-ons are among the most popular. That said, you could also argue with a good deal of confidence that the same trend holds true for other major browsers.
• In conclusion, it looks like the ongoing battle between advertisers—who are always looking for ways to profit from promoting products and services—and users, who just want clean, distraction-free content, isn’t going away anytime soon. As long as this struggle continues, quite expectedly, ad blockers will likely remain among the most popular browser add-ons.
• Cloudflare’s bot bouncer blocks weirdo browsers
  • from The Register
  • Users of some of the less well-known web browsers are getting blocked from accessing multiple sites by Cloudflare’s flaky browser-detection routines.
  • Aside from reporting it on Cloudflare’s forum, there appears to be little users can do, and the company doesn’t seem to be paying attention.
  • Cloudflare is one of the giants of content distribution network. As well as providing fast local caches of busy websites, it also attempts to block bot networks and DDoS attacks by detecting and blocking suspicious activity. Among other things, being “suspicious” includes machines that are part of botnets and are running scripts. One way to identify this is by looking at the browser agent and, if it’s not from a known browser, blocking it. This is a problem if the list of legitimate browsers is especially short and only includes recent versions of big names such as Chrome (and its many derivatives) and Firefox.
  • The problem isn’t new, and whatever fixes or updates occasionally resolve it, the relief is only temporary and it keeps recurring. We’ve found reports of Cloudflare site-blocking difficulties dating back to 2015 and continuing through 2022.
  • In the last year, The Register has received reports of Cloudflare blocking readers in March, again in July 2024, and earlier this year in January.
  • Users of recent versions of Pale Moon, Falkon, and SeaMonkey are all affected. Indeed, the Pale Moon release notes for the most recent couple of versions mention that they’re attempts to bypass this specific issue, which often manifests as the browser getting trapped in an infinite loop and either becoming unresponsive or crashing. Some users of Firefox 115 ESR have had problems, too. Since this is the latest release in that family for macOS 10.13 and Windows 7, it poses a significant issue. Websites affected include science.org, steamdb.info, convertapi.com, and – ironically enough – community.cloudflare.com.
  • According to some in the Hacker News discussion of the problem, something else that can count as suspicious – other than using niche browsers or OSes – is something as simple as asking for a URL unaccompanied by any referrer IDs. To us, that sounds like a user with good security measures that block tracking, but it seems that, to the CDN merchant, this looks like an alert to an action that isn’t operated by a human.
  • Making matters worse, Cloudflare tech support is aimed at its corporate customers, and there seems to be no direct way for non-paying users to report issues other than the community forums. The number of repeated posts suggests to us that the company isn’t monitoring these for reports of problems.
  • We have asked Cloudflare to comment, and we’ll update this story if it gets back to us.
  • Our thanks to Register readers Ian West and previous commenter and Certified Fraud Examiner Andy Prough for bringing this to our attention, as well as Pale Moon maintainer “Moonchild.”
• Thunderbird 136 Release Adds New Appearance Controls
  • from OMGUbuntu
  • Desktop email client Thunderbird announced a move to monthly releases by default earlier this year, allowing new users to benefit from new features, sooner – as the new Thunderbird 136.0 release makes evident!
  • Thunderbird 136.0 sees messages auto-adapt to dark mode (and adds a quick toggle to control this in the header) — no more searing-white e-mail shocks in dark rooms!
  • Also added is a new Appearance setting to control message threading and sorting order globally. This is great if you always want, say, new messages at the bottom in all your configured folders.
  • Some notable fixes include ensuring that addresses clicked in the header no longer appear off-screen for those using HiDPI displays, and ensuring that UI font sizes changes made in app do apply to all areas (as a few dialogs weren’t hooked in).
  • Other changes, tweaks, UI improvements, and performance buffs feature (some issues may related to the previous release channel release and might not have been presented in ESR builds) including:
    • Criteria for closing idle message databases changed
    • Fix for some messages being threaded incorrectly in unified folders
    • Correct release channel is now displayed in “About Thunderbird” dialog
    • Deleting or detaching attachments in a saved .eml file now works
    • Assorted fixes for Unified folders, including incorrect threading
    • Fix for IMAP new mail notifications not showing
    • Sending to multiple SMTPs could fail silently due to missing address book
    • “Save Link As” now working for RSS feed content
  • Beyond that, there’s a fresh round of security patches to plug newly discovered and/or recently disclosed flaws (and some of those will make their way to Thunderbird ESR channel users too).
  • The Thunderbird snap in Ubuntu will, AIUI, stick with ESR so if you want to switch to the release channel version you’ll need to swap to the beta channel (you can do that in App Center) which carries v136 at the time I write this.
  • Alternatively, download Thunderbird from the official website where it comes as a standalone binary runtime for Linux, with relevant to links to Windows and macOS builds for those who need them.
• Pocket Casts Makes Its Web Player Free and Criticizes Corporate-Owned Rivals Moss
  • from How-To Geek
  • Pocket Casts’ web and desktop clients no longer require a subscription or login. The company previously charged $4 a month for web and desktop access, though its mobile apps has been free of charge since 2019.
  • This is somewhat overdue, but it’s a welcome change nonetheless. Pocket Casts is a fantastic platform with a clean interface and plenty of advanced functionality. Its unwavering focus on podcasting sets it apart from Spotify and YouTube, and its platform-agnostic approach makes it a more accessible option than Apple Podcasts.
  • Now that its browser-based web app, Mac app, and Windows app are free to use, Pocket Casts is even more accessible and appealing than before. The company frames this as an act of consumer advocacy, citing its belief that corporations are attacking the open and decentralized structure that has defined podcasts for over two decades.
  • However, this change should also be seen as a response to growing pressures in the industry. Apple Podcasts recently increased its accessibility by launching a multi-platform web app—a move that threatens to poach Pocket Casts users who own a mix of iOS, macOS, Android, or Windows devices. YouTube is pushing creators toward a centralized video podcast format that siphons content and customers away from audio platforms like Pocket Casts, and Spotify is gobbling up market share by signing exclusive deals with popular podcasters. Leaning into freedom and decentralization makes sense.
    • “Podcasting was built on an open, decentralized standard, RSS, which means that anyone can create, share, and listen to content freely, without needing a specific platform’s approval. But today, major platforms are shifting away from open standards, moving creators into proprietary systems that limit distribution and control discovery through algorithms … By making our Web Player available to everyone, we’re reinforcing our belief that podcasts belong to the people, not corporations.”
  • Obviously, hardcore podcast listeners should create a free Pocket Casts account for playback syncing, queueing, and saving subscriptions or preferences. But the ability to use Pocket Casts without a login or app download is downright awesome. If you want to share a podcast with someone, you can just send them the Pocket Casts link. And if you host a podcast, you can embed the Pocket Casts player into your blog or website—I imagine that this will be very useful to tech or finance publications that operate podcasts alongside their written content.
  • I should also point out that Pocket Casts utilizes an “organic” Discovery system. Instead of using “an AI that promotes what’s best for the platform,” the company curates its podcast suggestions and offers deep search functionality so that you can find podcasts on your own. Human curation is something that helps Pocket Casts stand apart from the competition, and it contributes to the “decentralized” ideals that Pocket Casts is trying to associate with.
  • Pocket Casts Plus, the $4 monthly subscription, isn’t going away. But it’s totally optional. Those who pony up a few bucks a month will gain neat features like subscription folders (for in-app organization), Smart Shuffle, timestamp bookmarking, podcast chapter navigation (similar to chapters on YouTube), smartwatch playback, and exclusive app themes. The subscription also unlocks a year of premium Slumber Studios content—this content is not exclusive to Pocket Casts, but it normally requires a separate subscription (which isn’t unusual for some podcast studios).
  • Negative comment: There is no Linux app, but you can always use it in your browser.

— Play Security Transition Bumper —

Security and Privacy

10 minutes

• France rejects controversial encryption backdoor provision
  • from TechRadar
  • Encryption refers to scrambling data into an unreadable form to prevent third-party access. End-to-end encryption is the reiteration that messaging apps and secure email services, among other tools like today’s best VPNs, use to protect data in transit by keeping it private between the sender and the receiver – end to end.
  • As cryptographers and other experts have long argued, however, it’s not possible to create an encryption backdoor that only good guys can exploit.
  • Commenting on the French case, CEO of Tuta Mail, Matthias Pfau, said: “A backdoor for the good guys only is a dangerous illusion. Weakening encryption for law enforcement inevitably creates vulnerabilities that can – and will – be exploited by cybercriminals and hostile foreign actors.”
  • In 2016, France also rejected an amendment to its Digital Republic law requiring the creation of an encryption backdoor. The provision was introduced as an attempt to fight against terrorism but was deemed a “vulnerability by design” by France’s digital minister at the time, Axelle Lemaire – The Register reported.
  • As the Global Encryption Coalition warned in an open letter published on March 4, a backdoor would have also weakened the French messaging app Olvid, which was officially certified by the country’s cybersecurity agency and recommended to French ministers and government officials.
  • Considering the Salt Typhoon hack in the US – which sparked a warning to switch to encrypted services – and France’s concern for Russian alleged cyberattacks, as Politico reported, “the reliance by the French government, citizens, and businesses on end-to-end encryption to keep themselves safe and secure has never been greater,” noted experts.
  • The National Assembly eventually listened to concerns from the industry and scraped the encryption backdoor requirement in the bill on March 6.
  • Despite the widespread criticism, however, France’s Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau confirmed his support for the encryption backdoor provision as a necessity to ensure “maximum efficiency” in combating organized crimes, Le Monde reported.
  • Commenting on this point, Bozakov from Tuta Mail told TechRadar: “I am worried that politicians still do not understand anything about cybersecurity – even though there are enormous foreign threats right now targeting our societies mainly from Russia and China.”
  • France’s attempt to undermine encryption may have been halted once again. However, the country isn’t alone in pushing to pick the lock of encrypted communications to facilitate criminal investigations.
  • Sweden is also considering passing a similar requirement for the likes of Signal, WhatsApp, and iMessage. If successful, the new rules could come into force as early as March 2026.
  • These plans have already attracted strong criticism from the tech industry, with Signal President Meredith Whittaker reiterating that Signal would rather leave the country than undermine its encryption protections.
  • On February 21, 2025, Apple was even forced to kill its iCloud’s end-to-end encryption feature in the UK following a government order to create an encryption backdoor.
  • Since 2022, the EU has also been trying to pass its Chat Control proposal to scan citizens’ private communications, including encrypted messages, to halt the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
  • As Romain Digneaux, Public Policy Manager at Proton (the provider behind Proton VPN and Proton Mail), points out, while these efforts are nothing new and tend to fail (as in the case of France), they consistently come back.
  • “What we see is creativity from law enforcement to try to push the same old concept with new names – and that’s concerning,” Digneaux told TechRadar.
  • “The side-client scanning is a clear example of that. That’s just an encryption backdoor but with a fancy name. Something that sounds more technical and more acceptable to people who don’t necessarily understand how the tech works.”
• TAILS replaces balenaEtcher with Rufus as installer for Windows – Majid
  • From tails.net (via londoner0
  • TAILS has replaced balenaEtcher with Rufus in their installation instructions for Windows to solve privacy concerns with balenaEtcher.
  • Since January 2019, they had been recommending balenaEtcher to install Tails from Windows and macOS. They siad they loved the simplicity of balenaEtcher, which was really easier to use and worked on macOS as well.
  • Shortly after, balenaEtcher started displaying ads. Although TAILS didn’t like that, they initially didn’t view it as a significant privacy risk and had no better alternative at the time.
  • However, in 2024, the situation changed: balenaEtcher started sharing the file name of the image and the model of the USB stick with the Balena company and possibly with third parties. While TAILS has not experienced or heard of any attacks against Tails users stemming from this change, they believe it introduces potential for abuse. To eliminate that risk altogether, they started looking again for alternatives.
  • After evaluating 7 other tools, TAILS finally chose Rufus. They had tested Rufus many years ago, even before recommending balenaEtcher, but it was much harder to use and modified the Tails image in ways that were risky.
  • Congratulations to Akeo Consulting, the company behind Rufus, for really improving the usability and reliability of their tool!
  • TAILS have not yet replaced balenaEtcher in our installation instructions for macOS because Rufus doesn’t work on macOS. Also, as Tails doesn’t work on Apple M1 and M2 processors, people who install Tails from macOS represent less than 10% of installations nowadays.
  • Still, they recommend 2 alternatives for macOS: installing Tails using dd on the command line or using Raspberry Pi Imager.
    

— Play Wanderings Transition Bumper —

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

30 minutes (~5-8 mins each)

• Bill
  • Work work work! For the last couple of months with a couple of exceptions, I’ve been doing a run which takes me to Sinton, Texas – a small town in the southern part of the state. There’s a steel mill there where we take small aluminum ingots, the shape of cones – about the size of the palm of your hand. They apparently go into the mixture to make the steel more or less malleable. I usually deliver down there on Wednesday morning, I then re-load in Fort Worth the next day, deliver that in Kentucky and then go home. The whole thing takes the entire week. The money is good, so I’m content. I’m still trying to bounce back from the horror that was November and December. Work was not so good during those months presumably because of the impending inauguration. Work is better now, and I’m starting to bounce back. I plan to slow down a bit after the Mid America Trucking show at the end of the month I don’t think I’ve gained any weight back as a result of the time on the road, but I fear slipping back into my old routines.
  • Normally on the weeks after a live stream, I take two laptops on the road with me. One of them is considerably more powerful than the other, which is the one I do the audio editing and show publishing on. Both of these machines run Arch. The command to fully update an Arch installation in the terminal is “sudo pacman -Syu.”
    • problem with repos
    • the fix
    • example of how upgrading in place can at times be a detriment.
• Joe
  • Minimal 3d printing but some interesting things.
  • I had been working on the bag hook that I use at work and talked about it some last show where I had issues with the print quality in certain parts. Outer walls being wavy and some small issues with wall adhesion but not layer adhesion.
  • I tightened up the belts to make sure that it was not a precision problem but I had not seen much improvement in the quality so I decided to switch to PETG and how well that worked
  • Well it printed the wavy walls was still there but the biggest problem was that it was extremely brittle. I was able to snap it into chunks with very little difficulty.
  • I had been trying to print it quicker and the box was suggesting higher temps as it was so the nozzle temp was very high and this can lead to brittleness in PETG. I turned the heat and the speed down and tried a quicker print since the bag hook was a long print to begin with.
  • Instead I printed a stand for Moss to fit his Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny. the first one did a little better at the changed settings but there was a very serious problem on the top layer not coming out. I ended up increasing the infill and lowering the temp even more to well below the suggested temp and it came out pretty darn good and not brittle at all. its not as snug as I would like but I think it might be good to add a little bit of fabric any way and that will be just enough room for it.
  • My messing around with the mini rack has slowed a lot with work getting in the way a bit and a few 14 hour work days getting in the way but I am also not a fan of taking it apart again to do the hardware stuff.
  • Still I got some more of the software side of things played around with. All the printing that I have done has been from the Octopi Docker image so that is working well with USB passthrough.
  • I also got my audiobookshelf instance working mostly the way that I want it to but I need to work on the permissions for writing so that it can act as podcatcher and player as well.
  • I also once again spent a couple of days working on PCI passthrough on the Proxmox box. This time so that I could give the graphical portion of the APU to one of the VMs so that it could be hooked up to a monitor. I cannot express how frustrating this was without going through the tedium of the process. But I was able to get things working in the end after turning on UEFI for the VM and turning off NOVNC display.
  • The USB passthrough for the VM was pretty easy so that I could use a keyboard to setup some external control stuff for now including
    • kdeconnect
    • barrier
    • x2go
  • And then I disconnected the keyboard and mouse and started using barrier. I also pulled out a USB sound card and a set of headphones to test the sound functionality. I also needed to make sure that was passed through but that’s pretty old hat at this point.
  • Very happy with how it turned out. I could have jumped through the hoops to try and set up the headset jack on the PC itself or to split out the audio on the HDMI but I just figured it would save my sanity to just use the USB audio card.
  • All of this so that I can do it again on the computer that moss sent me and be able to have another Proxmox node and a set top box at the same time. The processor is exactly the same and all I need to do is bump up the ram and everything should be good.
  • Then I decided to go ahead and do the upgrades. I pulled the Prodesk off the rack and opened it up. The ram upgrade from 12 to 36gb seemed easy enough. Then I put in the NVMe to 5 SATA ports with the right angle adapters. Sadly the case just barely would not fit back on.
  • I had found some other much lower profile cables that probably would have worked but they were much more expensive per cable. Somewhere between 7 and 15 dollars per cable and I would have to wait for them to show up.
  • I ended up getting out some foam two sided tape and dirtied it up a bit to make it less sticky on one side then placing it in position on top of the connectors and then set the case on it lined up as much as possible. Then I got out my Dremel and some cutter blades and made a hole. This worked beautifully.
  • Got the wires run through the back of the casing from the hole for the serial port that I removed and put some tape over the hole for the connectors. Then I removed the casing for the 2.5 inch SSD and then used some Kapton tape to protect the exposed metal parts and wedged it in there since its space is now mostly taken up with the SATA connectors.
  • I hooked up the drives that were previously connected from the USB-C to multi-SATA adapter which was an 8 Tb and two 250 Gb drives to it while also adding in the power and data extension cables that I got so that I could more easily slide them in and out. Now I need to go through and cable manage again.
  • Imagine my frustration after I got it put back into the rack and it started beeping at me about a ram error. I had to pull it back out and re-seat the RAM, and then it started up but the drives were not seen and the virtualization had turned itself off. I was able to get the virtualization on easy enough but it took updating the bios and then realizing that I needed to turn off Optane to get the drives to be seen.
  • Then sadly I had to wipe the drives in order for Proxmox to use them properly but OK. The two smaller drives are going to be LVM’s where I will store VMs and startup images and I have already started splitting up the 8tb for data on the other drives.
• Moss
  • I performed a half-hour concert in Festival of the Living Rooms last night. I think it went well. Got 7 songs in, only one of which I wrote.
  • But on Friday night at the Open Filking, Marc Grossman played a filk he wrote of a song I never would have touched, it’s just too powerful, but after he desecrated it I completely misheard what he was singing, and voila, I had a new song of my own. Finally got it done around 4 am before going to bed.
  • I performed my new song in the Saturday night open circle, and it was quite well received. My guitar, Lenore, sounded fantastic on the Rock setting for this song.
  • I was pleasantly surprised at receiving an email from one of the teachers I substituted for, the one who teaches chemistry and computer science, requesting I sub for him on April 10. That’s a Thursday, and I very rarely work anything other than Monday or Friday (for pecuniary reasons, I get paid $10 more for those days), but wow, so yes, I made an exception. The app we use for scheduling is a real bear, but we finally got things set up so that I could work that day and not get called in for other Thursdays. He also said he had taken a listen to Full Circle Weekly News and enjoyed it. Win-win.
  • I submitted my first Bodhi Corner article for Full Circle Magazine. While the name is the same as what I’m doing here in mintCast, I am taking a different and more personal approach, keeping the technical stuff for mintCast. At least for the time being I am not duplicating material between the two sources. The article will appear in this month’s FCM, and will continue as long as I can find something to write.
• Majid
  • Ramadan
  • Plex Adventures
    • Still buggy!
  • Atypical Podcast reborn
    • Bill
    • Audacity
      • FFmpeg
    • Web hosting
    • Convenience vs Education
  • Apple Music
  • Headphones > codecs
  • DeX
  • TV
    • Invincible
    • Reacher
    • Paradise
    • Daredevil Born Again
    • A Thousand Blows
    • Silo (Apple TV!)
  • Work
    • NHS waits

— Play Innards Transition Bumper —

Linux Innards

30 minutes (~5-8 minutes each)

• Media Streaming
  • Freeform discussion

–Play Bodhi Corner Transition Bumper*–

Bodhi Corner

• There was a recent update of Moksha and all the themes. I am not going to go over all changes but instead note some that users and developers may notice or probably should know. Enlightenment config files have traditionally been stored in a hidden folder in the users home directory: ~/.e/e
• For Bodhi7 users this has not changed but what has changed it the added environmental variable E_USER_HOME. In BL7, E_USER_HOME is set to the ~/.e/e as above.
• But for future releases of Bodhi we will be moving this location.
• In BL8 Bodhi will follow freedesktop standards and use XDG_CONFIG_HOME as I should and XDG_CONFIG_HOME defaults to ~/.config
• Hence in later versions of Bodhi E_USER_HOME will be ~/.config/e
• But as Moksha v 7 and earlier follow the XDG Base Directory Specification the user can change this location.
• For people who compile Moksha from source this can be enabled or disabled. For now, if Moksha is compiled with the CFLAGS option -DDOXDG moksha will have support for the XDG_CONFIG_HOME change mentioned above. If Moksha is compiled normally with the usual CFLAGS it will not, and the e config file will be the usual ~/.e/e.
• By default in Bodhi, Moksha uses the Moksha-menu package to determine how to display the Application menu. But e17 and enlightenment now have their own menu file e-applications.menu. For Bodhi purposes, this menu is inadequate (for example not displaying some installed applications anywhere in the menu), so in the distant past Bodhi used the Lxde menu. When Jeff Hoogland forked e17 to create Moksha he completely removed the e-applications menu file. However, to avoid an Lxde dependency and to better control what @ylee wanted displayed and how, he created Moksha-menu.
• For those that compile Moksha from source, what this meant was that not only must one compile Moksha, one must also have Moksha-menu installed, set XDG_MENU_PREFIX before the compile, or patch Moksha to use whatever menu file that you do have installed and wish to use. Failure to do so would mean whenever you first booted Moksha up you would have no menu at all under Applications.
• Clearly this is less than ideal, but for our usage it never mattered. We clearly know what to install and how to configure it so that Bodhi and Moksha work as expected. However, for any using Moksha on Distros other than Bodhi the above was some important information and not widely documented.
• The latest Moksha update changes all this some. For one thing, the e-applications.menu has been added back (the latest version in enlightenment’s git repo). After all, any menu is better than no menu at all. And another CFLAGS option has been added to set an environmental option to use while compiling Moksha to set the menu file in case you do not wish to use the e-applications menu.
• Specifically:
  • If XDG_MENU_PREFIX is set that is the menu that will be used.
  • Otherwise, the CFLAGS option -DMOKSHA_MENU forces the use of Moksha-menu if XDG_MENU_PREFIX is not set.
  • If MOKSHA_MENU and both XDG_MENU_PREFIX are not set then the e-applications menu will be used.
  • It is my hope this will make things easier on all who use Moksha, and no questions about why a menu is missing from those that compile Moksha from git 😉
• OK now for the last change in Moksha that I am going to mention here and this one is one many users will notice:
  • When Jeff Hoogland forked e17 and created Moksha he removed all the backgrounds that came with e17. I suppose he did not like them. So Moksha shipped with the default e17 theme background and the background of whatever theme we were using for that Bodhi release. The entire systems background in the Wallpaper settings window was therefore empty. Unless the user had installed one or more of the Moksha backgrounds from our repo.
  • Robert has restored the systems background folder with a few select e17 and e27 backgrounds, plus the e27 background from Raster’s flat elm theme and added it as well. He probably will add a few more later. The backgrounds are very simple and may only appeal to a few. But adding these back does simplify packaging Moksha for the repos. Others who wish to use Moksha on their own distro are free to add whatever they wish here when they compile Moksha.
  • The Wallscape module offers Bodhi Linux users an alternative method for setting desktop backgrounds, featuring impressive animation effects. Initially an unfinished Enlightenment 17 (e17) module, the Bodhi team revived and renamed it to provide a more visually dynamic wallpaper experience.
  • Key Features of Wallscape:
    • Animated Backgrounds: Unlike the standard Moksha background module, Wallscape introduces animated effects, adding a dynamic aesthetic to your desktop.
    • Simplified Functionality: While it may not encompass all the features of the native background module, its straightforward design makes it user-friendly for those seeking basic wallpaper customization with added flair.
  • Installing Wallscape:
    • To enhance your desktop with Wallscape, you can install it directly from the Bodhi Linux AppCenter or, if you prefer, directly from CLI:
      • sudo apt update
      • sudo apt install moksha-module-wallscape
    • Using Wallscape is straightforward and intuitive—just locate it in your Main Menu. Then go into Settings -> Modules, go to Look, and activate the module.
• More helpers are always needed. At present, Stefan is the only person working on themes, and while he does an excellent job, more could be done. Robert is the only one who can actually create the ISO. We have lots of excellent help on translations, but we may have missed some, and some translators may have moved on to other projects.
• The Bodhi Forum and Bodhi Discord are great places to find answers. The forum can be found at Bodhi Linux Forums.
• And of course, there is the Patreon account ishould wish to support Bodhi financially. A main benefit to joining the Patreon is access to more regular newsletters from Robert Wiley on what is happening.

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Vibrations from the Ether

20 minutes (~5 minutes each)

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Housekeeping & Announcements

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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 the other two podcasts I am on, Linux OTC (with Eric & Majid) 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 – 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 and for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
• 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
• The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>

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