Episode 473 Show Notes

Welcome to mintCast

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

This is Episode 473!

Recorded on Sunday, November 23, 2025.

Having a day again im Joe; GNU2Linux Sniffling and Coughing, I’m Bill; Having Fun with my Ears I’m Majid; … Eric; …Back in the saddle again I’m Charles; at one with my keyboard, I’m Jim

— Play Standard Intro —

  • First up in the news: Theres and initiative in protecting OTA TV from DRM
  • Then in our Wanderings: Joe does a lot, Bill plays magical video cards, Majid is trying to resist Black Friday, Charles goes to a Linux conference, and Jim eschews the mouse.
  • 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

— Play Wanderings Transition Bumper —

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

30 minutes (~5-8 mins each)

  • Bill
    • Video card issues
    • late shows
  • Joe
    • The last show where we had wanderings there was a lot of mention of calendars and setting them up. I decided to look into it a bit and wanted to import my google calendar into mint. I have never used it before but i can see that the option has always been there. I used the online accounts application in mint and logged into my google account.
    • It worked pretty easy. Just logged in and told it that i did not want to import my email, i would assume into thunderbird. i dont want my emails stored local. but it did import my calendar and gave me direct access to my google drive. I know it is a very simple thing but it is something that i normally would not think to do. General paranoia and all.
    • I see that it also provides a way to logon to nextcloud and webdav. I can see how that would be useful. I will have to wait until i redo my nextcloud before i try it out.
    • I was also convinced by my fellow podcasters to try out immich. I set up the LXC using helper scripts pretty easy and setup on my phone without any trouble. There was some issues and delays migrating all of my pictures on the phone to the server. it did happen. 28gb with a little bit of hand holding. I did have to expand the image for the lxc once to make it large enough for all the photos and to provide a bit of room for growth. I also had some on my computer that i made a backup of on my samba shares and then provided access to the folder to the immich LXC which made all the photos accessible from the immich interface but does not import it to the local db.
    • I find immich to be an easier interface to use compared to amazon or google photos. It is fast and simple but does lack the ability to search for videos and i do see how the AI stuff could be useful in parsing images but it could take a while to be useful.
    • Also got a wild hair and decided to finally go down the rabbit hole in regards to pxe boot. Something that i have thought sounded fun for a long time. I setup an LXC for iventoy and that went pretty easy. i had to expand the image and then wget the iso image into the proper location. I started this with linux mint. I dont install it everyday but i do it often enough it might be nice to not need to have a usb stick on me to do it every time.
    • That was pretty cool even if i only tested it from another blank VM at first. But i do want a custom iso that i can boot with applications that i use already available using some local storage and appimages or a network share and appimages.
    • i would like that but then i also want to test using it over a router that is set to wireguard back home and do the whole thing from a remote location. I think that would be the most useable way to do it.
    • I think that a setup like this would be great for a tails box. Something that can be wiped out and restarted with minimal changes. I should be able to make a searchable samba share that is read only that provides access to all of the appimages i want to use regularly. Which i should probably set up anyway. I wonder if i could get gearlever to use a samba mount as the main storage location.
    • As a matter of fact i did grab a copy of tails iso and was able to get it to run from a pxe boot on a vm. and i was able to get appimages to run on it so it will work as a disposable secure OS if that is what i need.  I also was asked to install mint on my sons laptop since he was having trouble with windows. 
    • Hooking it up to the network and then booting it up and getting the bios to do pxe boot first i was able to install mint over the network and found out that his issue was not with windows but with the keyboard. I dont know if he spilled something on it or dropped it but a couple of the keys are crossed.  I have looked into the fix for it and it will cost 30 dollars do it cheap and very difficult and wrong.  It will cost 80 dollars be much less difficult and right because of how the keyboard is secured with plastic tabs.  But anyway that will be for a later date.  It works fine with an external mouse and keyboard on mint so he has it back and will be using it that way.
    • I also noticed that the arctis 9x that i replaced one earcup on with a 3d printed one was starting to break on the other side.  not so much as to be unusable but it will be eventually.  I did not want to try with that one on the mic side at first because i am using it regularly and had concerns about getting it right.  so i ordered another one from ebay for very low cost.  While waiting for it i printed both sides.
    • I am happy to report that i was able to replace the shell on both sides.  i had to make a diagram of all the locations and colors of the solder joins and put some deoxit on the volume wheel and it took a few hours but it got done and i think that the petg will last much longer than the original plastic did.  I like that i can get these for cheap and fix them, if not easily at least reliably
    • Another issue on the mini rack, my docker lxc quit working.  at least the docker portion of it did.  it would still start up the environment but nothing in docker would run.  I took a look however at all of the things that were there and on my other docker instances and the only thing that i was using was audiobookshelf.
    • there is a preconfigured lxc for audiobookshelf so i set that up and passed the drives to it.  It took a while to get all of my audiobooks rescanned and i will have to redo a lot of the work in identifying books since i was not able to migrate the configs.  But it will be up and running.  
    • I will be bringing back docker for nextcloud and probably emulatorjs again but this time i will be doing it from within a VM so i better control and better access to storage.  I am also thinking about switching from OMV to a different share controller.  So maybe truenas? 
    • Then my mouse.  I have the MX ergo trackball mouse and i have had it for a few years at this point.  but the batter is starting to die.  Like i will have to recharge the thing every other day.  I priced new batteries and they were only like 15 dollars and they use a 3 cable system.  I remembered that i had purchased some batteries for some of the other Arctis headsets that were also 3 cable so i figured i would use one of them and see what happens.  Got the device taken apart and the battery removed and the holder for the battery as well and new battery while being 3 times the size had a smaller connector.  so i pulled out the soldering iron and swapped the cables over and with some cramming and some gentle attention with a dremmel i got the battery to fit and it should last a very long time between charges.
    • I aslo had a problem that with my garage computer. Not good. the motherboard seems to have died. I have tried a few different power supplies to make sure that it was the issue and i get no signs of life from it. Which kinda sucks. But it does tell me that i need to adjust a couple of things so that they are independent of my primary computer. Mkaing sure that if it is down my autmation on the mini rack can still run and vice versa. Anyway i had another computer that i was using as a proxmox box in another room. Its got a good processor but it only has two ram slots and a very proprietary motherboard and power supply. I pulled the drives from the garage pc and put them into the new box but because of the size of the case and the power supply i am not able to use the graphics card that i got from Bill. It took a couple of adapters but i got everything else hooked up and was able to power the device up with 32gb of ram. The old machine had 64gb but this should be more than enough for now. Ram is not cheap right now and it will be some time before i can afford a proper upgrade. I am also keeping an eye out for a motherboard. I could go either direction AMD or Intel since i have both available but if i want to use my current case it will need to be a MATX board and i will need to get some more ram since most of mine seems to have been ruined.
    • I think that the issue may be the hdmi switcher that i was using was causing some kind of power surge that was putting power back into the motherboard and burning out components.  
    • Anyway it died while i was working from home and i was not going to get time to fix it while working.  what i did instead was use one of my vms from one of the two proxmox machines and rerun the hdmi cables.  It worked really well even using two monitors.  Had to install a couple of applications that i use regularly but i had a working machine in no time flat. 
    • Most everything was already set up on it i just needed to pass the graphics to the vm.  I also have a mini monitor that is hooked to the rack that i have not properly used yet so i am thinking that i will create a dashboard on there to be able to see all the stats of my various systems.  Will need to look around and see what is available.  
    • As to using it for my daily needs, i have to say that it worked really well and did not cause any problems with the LXC’s that are also running on the box. Which granted is not a lot, just my IVENTOY and my homeassistant.
  • Majid
    • Bloody cold here!
    • Server News
      • Random shut downs
      • audiobookshelf
      • Immich is still a bit off
      • not-so-static IPs
      • Portainer issues, so now using Dockman and Komodo
      • Tailscale
      • pi-hole
    • Workspaces!
    • Marathon 4 podcast day!
      • OTC my favourite!
      • Tech support at Roundtable (same for Bill too!)
      • Did episode of DHD with Dale
        • Cosmic is ok, but I cant see it becoming a major DE for me
        • What next? Another immutable? Ghost BSD
        • Not had the guts to put another distro on my X elite laptop
      • My own podcast on mindfulness with Hasini
        • Helping people
    • Android Tablet experiment
      • Xiaomi Pad, Focus Keyboard
    • Ear bud adventures
      • Earfun 4 vs 4+ vs Cambridge A100 vs Sennheiser Momentum 2
    • Pi400 is now an Amiga machine
      • Getting the games on seems to be the issue
    • R360 stopped working, just outside of the return period!
    • Bought a new keyboard
    • Discovered Sleep Token
    • The Witcher season 4
      • Need a good GoT replacement
    • Havoc, revisted John Wick
  • Charles
  • I attend my first the Linux Conference in Seattle, WA Nov 7 & 8 on the campus of the Univ of WA.

Its called SeaGL https://seagl.org/

Founded in 2013, SeaGL (the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference) is a free—as in freedom and tea—grassroots technical summit dedicated to spreading awareness and knowledge about free / libre / open source software, hardware, and culture.

SeaGL strives to be welcoming, enjoyable, and informative for professional technologists, newcomers, enthusiasts, and all other users of free software, regardless of their background knowledge; providing a space to bridge these experiences and strengthen the free software movement through mentorship, collaboration, and community.

  • Talks I attended:

Kernel backport automation and validation in CentOS/RHEL

https://pretalx.seagl.org/2025/talk/HMNXFY

An overview of the backport automation and validation done on CentOS Stream kernel merge requests:

– what gets automatically backported?

– what checks are run?

– how do these changes end up in CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux?

We’ll walk through the building blocks that help ensure CentOS Stream (and by extension, Red Hat Enterprise Linux) kernels are ready for use on your mission-critical systems.

Webhook that performs CVE assignment automation and commit identification, parsing upstream vulns repo, updates triggering Jira issue Webhook that reacts to Jira issue updates, and triggers automated backport attempts

Automated submission of GitLab merge requests for successful backports

Build and test pipelines that run on merge request creation and code updates

Webhooks that react to merge request creation and updates to run various sanity checks

Project URL:

https://gitlab.com/cki-project/kernel-workflow

Project Lead – Jarod Wilson

  • Girlfriends Yahoo Email Issue – Out of Disk Space

Resolution: Set up Thunderbird on Her Lenovo Think-pad laptop. Set up local folders and moved/archived the inbox emails based on years into individual folder going back to the 2003?

Made 3 copies of the Thunderbird profile by exporting to a archive. Made another 3 copies of the Thunderbird home directory via tar getting the yahoo disk space down to about 2% utilization.

  • Failure of One Node Home Mesh Wireless TP-Link AC1200 Model Deco S4R

Primary node failed in the office, took off line, replaced it with the node I brought downstairs.

No longer have a node upstairs.

The other node in the living room is still working.

Pros-Easy to set up

Cons-You have to use their stupid mobile application to mange the network. Connecting via browser is not an option, it won’t work.

This TP-Link system was deployed when my Ubiquity mesh base system failed.😞

  • Jim
    • Remove Paywall: Firefox extension, shows multiple links to read paywalled articles on different archive sites
    • yt-dlp: Use switch –cookies-from-browser firefox to get past YouTube asking you to login; combine with –live-from-start to capture live streams from the beginning, plus add a VPN to get around their trivial geo-blocking to access sports & entertainment you would otherwise not be able to.
    • Discord keyboard shortcut tip: Alt + Shift + Up arrow and Alt + Shift + Down arrow to jump between channels with unread messages (Alt + Up arrow and Alt + Down arrow to jump between channels in general)
    • IRCCloud: not free or open source, but the best irc client imho. Others have some frustrations. Free version limited to two networks. Can display embedded images and video thumbnails unlike many other text only apps. Client for desktop, or in browser tab, or mobile app. Largely the same keyboard shortcuts as Discord, similar dark mode as well. Includes bouncer functionality so history remains if computer stays connected on free tier or at all times on paid tier. Libera network has many FOSS channels including #linux.
    • Lawnchair launcher on Galaxy A53 5G: Calendar Pad (from Aptoide app store) is working. Customized the individual icon on my home screen to match color scheme. Can’t use the Samsung calendar icon since date doesn’t change in Lanwchair like in One UI; found similar size and acceptable shape blue icon from a downloaded icon pack. App tray icons stay normal when using system default icons, most but not all of them change if you actually enable an icon pack in Lawnchair.
    • Cinnamon desktop environment in GhostBSD: easy to install from the Software Center, got my Super key launcher back. Looks similar to Mint Cinnamon minus the start menu logo and a few other included Linux apps like Timeshift.

— Play Vibrations Transition Bumper —

Vibrations from the Ether

20 minutes (~5 minutes each)

— Play Check This Transition Bumper —

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]

Join us live on Youtube

Post at the mintCast subreddit

Chat with us on Discord and Telegram

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 —

Linux Mint

The distribution that spawned a podcast. Support us by supporting them. Donate here.

Archive.org

We currently host our podcast at archive.org. Support us by supporting them. Donate here.

Audacity

They’ve made post-production of our podcast possible. Support us by supporting them. Contribute here.

Subscribe

MP3 Feed
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
Youtube

mintCast on the Web

Email
Twitter
Discord
Telegram
Reddit

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

This Website Is Hosted On:

Thank You for Visiting