Episode 463 Show Notes

Welcome to mintCast

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

This is Episode 463!

Recorded on Sunday, July 6, 2025

Wondering if Majid died the other day im Joe; Glad Majid’s Still Alive, I’m Bill; still alive, I’m Majid, living the dream Im Charles Eric is off fixing his wifes car!

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  • First up in the news: Linux hits 5%, Nintendo does what we feared, The orange baby eats a TACO, Steam prefers Proton to Native, Fedora might have killed Bazzite and a new Firefox release
  • We also welcome Charles as a new co-host!
  • In security and privacy: more password leakage by big tech
  • 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
  • We would like to take a moment to inform everyone of some of the changes we are making to Mintcast. Theres a general consensus that we need to adapt the format to maintain the quality of the show, and also keep it on a more sustainable footing. Therefore, we are making the following changes, which we started with the last show (462) as a trial, and are going to make permanent to update the length and format of the show.
  • We have also switched to a more conversational format for the News and Security and Privacy. Less rote reading, more conversation.
  • We’ve decided to split off the “Wanderings” to the Round Table episode which currently is only on YouTube, though we are considering adding to the RSS feed.
  • Moving forward, the episodes will alternate between News episodes, and Innards episodes. This will also allow more time to discuss things which demand more attention, while being mindful of the overall length of the show.
  • To be clear, “Wanderings” will be during the “Roundtable” show which is live-streamed on Saturday’s opposited of the regular show. Of course other stuff will be discussed as well. Again, in the future we may decide to add Roundtable to the RSS Feed so that folks who only subscribe to the “audio only” version of the show may still hear the Wanderings. This may end up being a bonus for them…. A Mintcast Extra so to speak.
  • One thing we have perhaps not been as clear about as we should is that Roundtable is open to anyone in the community. We get together on our Discord channel (links on the website) every Saturday opposite the regular show at 3 PM US Eastern time. All, and we mean ALL are welcome. MintCast is by design a community-driven podcast. We want to talk about the stuff YOU want us to talk about.
  • We would ask for a bit of time to give the new format a chance for a while. It may take a little while to get the rough edges ironed out, but we’re confident it will be a better experience for everyone.
  • We hope these changes serve the purpose of allowing us to improve the quality of the content while also creating a show that is sustainable for the present, and future hosts. We would love to get any feedback you may have on the subject. If you think the new format is rubbish..tell us! If you think its great…tell us! This is YOUR show as much as it is ours.

— Play News Transition Bumper —

The News

20 minutes

  • Trump extends deadline for US TikTok sale to September TACO news CHARLES
    • U.S. President Donald Trump the other day extended to September 17 a deadline for China-based ByteDance to divest the U.S. assets of short-video app TikTok despite a law that mandated a sale or shutdown without significant progress.
    • A 2024 law required TikTok to stop operating by January 19 unless TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance had completed divesting the app’s U.S. assets or demonstrated significant progress toward a sale.
    • Extended several times while a deal is being sought
    • A deal had been in the works this spring that would spin off TikTok’s U.S. operations into a new U.S.-based firm, majority-owned and operated by U.S. investors, but it was put on hold after China indicated it would not approve it following Trump’s announcements of steep tariffs on Chinese goods.
    • Some Democratic lawmakers argue that Trump has no legal authority to extend the deadline and suggest that the deal under consideration would not meet legal requirements.
  • Steam Client Now Enables Proton by Default for Games without Native Linux Builds

9to5Linux

  • Valve released a new stable Steam Client update today, bringing a few interesting changes for Linux gamers, as well as various other enhancements and bug fixes.
  • The Steam Client update for June 30th, 2025, enables Proton by default for games that don’t have a native Linux build, which is equivalent to setting the “Enable SteamPlay for other titles” option to the enabled state. Also for Linux gamers, this release improves the installation speed of Steam Client updates.
  • Among other noteworthy changes, the new Steam Client update promises to reduce startup times for players with a large number of non-Steam games, enable the Steam Helper app to run natively on Apple Silicon, improve audio resilience to variable network conditions, and improve support for non-Steam Deck devices.
  • Various bugs were addressed across Big Picture Mode, Steam Chat, Steam Input, SteamVR, Steam Library, and Steam Overlay, so check out the release notes for more details. Meanwhile, you can update your Steam Client installations to the new version by going to the Steam menu and clicking on the ‘Check for Steam Client Updates’ menu entry.
  • You’ll see a blue notification at the bottom of the screen, so click on the “Download” button on the right side to download the update, and when it finishes downloading, click the ‘Apply and Restart’ button to install the new update, which will automatically restart your Steam Client.
  • Firefox 141 appears to be a small release that only promises to use less memory on Linux systems and no longer require a forced restart after applying an update via a package manager. Another new feature in Firefox 141 looks to be the ability to drag a tab to your pinned tabs tray to pin it, or drag it out to unpin it.
  • It also looks like the wheel icon on the New Tab page that lets you customize the New Tab page with a wallpaper or change how many rows of shortcuts to see at a glance has been changed into a “Customize” button with a nice fade in/out effect.
  • For web developers, Firefox 141 promises to reenable support for CHIPS (Cookies Having Independent Partitioned State), implement the closedby attribute and its related closedBy property, and add support for clearing the bfcache (backwards-forwards cache) when receiving the Clear-Site-Data: “cache” response header
  • “This allows a site to ensure that if anyone navigates backward after a user has signed out, private details that were visible during the initial session will not be exposed,” said Mozilla.
  • Also for web developer, Firefox 141 promises support for the webkitdirectory HTML attribute and the corresponding HTMLInputElement.webkitdirectory property on Firefox for Android.
  • For add-on developers, Firefox 141 promises support for the i18n.getPreferredSystemLanguages method to retrieve the preferred locales of the operating system, which complements the i18n.getAcceptLanguages method that return details of the locales set in the web browser.

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Security and Privacy

10 minutes

  • 16 billion passwords leaked in Google, Facebook, Apple massive data breach
    • Sixteen billion passwords were leaked in a huge data breach.
    • Researchers found data sets that exposed logins and user account information for Apple, Google, and Facebook.
    • Researchers at Cybernews, an independent media outlet covering cybersecurity and information news, reported that they discovered over 30 datasets, each containing billions of logins to social media, VPNs, and user accounts for major tech companies like Apple and Google, had been left exposed by infostealers.
    • Change your password

Shape 1 — Play Vibrations Transition Bumper —

Vibrations from the Ether

20 minutes (~5 minutes each)

  • Mark donor on kofi
    • Thanks for all the great listening over the years, also going donate a few coffees worth to mint and archive.org on behalf of the other great hosts.
  • Alan Gilchrist emailed me from Scotland
    • Hi Majid.
    • I enjoyed your latest musings, ramblings, discussion on the last episode of MintCast.(460) I was interested in your experiences with the Lenovo Yoga slim 7x, as I have recently purchased one myself. It’s a really nice laptop. I, too, am finding it hard to get Linux installed on it, even though I’ve read some articles about it. I turned off Secure Boot, and switched off the BitLocker disk encryption. It doesn’t seem to recognise the USB disk… but that may be something to do with using an SD card with ventoy on it. So I’ll try the direct ISO approach. If you have any other specific tips on how you got it working, please let me know. I too had never played The Last Of Us, but I did enjoy the TV Series, and will be watching the second season. I’m writing/dictating(!) this in the shade of indoors, after spending the last hour listening to you all while lying out in the garden, sweltering in the lovely Midlothian sunshine… long may it last.
    • Regards from sunny Scotland.
    • Alan Gilchrist (via mobile)
    • Hi, me again.
    • I should have listened all the way thru before sending the first email – what reminiscing you all were doing… 
    • I bought an Amiga 500 in the late 80s, after seeing it in use at a work colleague’s home. I eventually gave it to my brother, and bought an Amiga 1200. Ended up putting it into a tower, with an upgrade card with a Motorola 68030 CPU. It still lives under my office desk, but I don’t use it – dunno if it even powers on..! 
    • Caved in and went to Windows 98 PC – Intel 486DX. Later upgraded to an Athlon X2 (been AMD ever since), and mid 2000s moved to Linux (never looked back). Lots of distros hopped, but Ubuntu, then Mint for years.. tho I’m now rocking Manjaro (its based on Arch, you know!🤣) and Nobara. 
    • I have to use Windows at work unfortunately, but I also use S390 😁
    • Regards Alan
    • Hi mate
    • Sorry for the insanely late reply, i had changed phones and for some reason this email account didnt transfer. I only realised when i tried checking it today and saw your lovely email(s).
    • So Ubuntu 25.04 on the snapdragon laptop stopped working after a windows firmware update. The bios just spits out “Ubuntu boot failed” and goes into Windows 11. I had to install it by disabling secure boot and bit locker when i first got it to work.
    • In a sense, im not surprise things went wrong, the distro did feel a lot like a beta, with all sorts of random bugs and issues, i couldnt use it as a daily driver. Maybe the next point release might be better. Its a shame, as its a bloody nice machine, great screen and keyboard. Great battery life. But hey ho.
    • So the Last of Us is on my (ever increasing) to-watch list. Ive recently watched Dept Q which was good, and am watching Rana Naidu (on Netflix) and The Crow Girl. It seems that british adaptations of Scandi Noir works well.
    • In my teens, i bet if you were to cut my heart open you’d see AMIGA written on it. I was such a fan, i loved those machines and that OS. Now Linux has taken that role! I do sometimes try and look at if I can run AROS or another derivative of AmigaOS, but dont have the hardware (or bank balance!). Ive been trying to run Arch (as in CachyOS or Garuda) but cant get it to work! #noob
    • Thanks again for your email.
    • Re your Ubuntu woes – this happened to me too..! I updated Windows, just to keep it fresh, and part of it was a firmware update. After that I got the “Ubuntu boot failed” and it boots into Windows 11.
    • However, I resolved it! I went back into the BIOS settings – and found that secure boot had been re-enabled. So I switched it back off, and it rebooted fine into Ubuntu. Yay.
    • I like the laptop – I got the battery charge indicator working by following an article I found – see below. The main issue is lack of sound. I can use bluetooth to pair with headphones, which works fine, but I would like the speakers to work.
    • I did install Garuda Linux once, but the neon colour scheme was too much for me. I find Manjaro to be the sweet spot between ease of use and up to date packages. Regards, Alan.”

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Check This Out

10 minutes

Housekeeping & Announcements

  • Thank you for listening to this episode of mintCast!
  • If you see something that you think we should be talking about, tell us!

Send us email at [email protected]

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Or post directly at https://mintcast.org

Wrap-up

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!>

— Play Closing Music and Standard Outro —

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