Welcome to mintCast

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

This is Episode 478!

Recorded on Sunday, February 1, 2026.

Trying to enjoy the weather im Joe; Hating Windows with a primal passion, I’m Majid; … Eric; Hello again I’m Charles; Resistant to change, I’m Jim

— Play Standard Intro —

• First up in security and privacy: Euro firms ditch American Clouds and systemd stuff
• Then in our Wanderings: Joe, Majid does yoga with his distros, Charles is our security guru, Jim explores the new Mint release

• 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 Security Transition Bumper —

Security and Privacy

10 minutes

• Systemd daddy quits Microsoft to prove Linux can be trusted
• Lennart Poettering’s Amutable aims to bring ‘cryptographically verifiable integrity’ to the other OS
• We are building cryptographically verifiable integrity into Linux systems
• Charles
• Euro firms must ditch Uncle Sam’s clouds and go EU-native
• Just because you’re paranoid about digital sovereignty doesn’t mean they’re not after you
• Europe’s digital sovereignty paranoia
• Charles
• Dow Chemical says AI is the element behind 4,500 job cuts
• The 129 year old chemical company uses Palantir-rival C3’s AI as its software of choice
• AI-pocalypse
• Charles

— Play Wanderings Transition Bumper —

The Wanderings

30 minutes (~5-8 mins each)

• Joe
  • Last time we did wanderings we had a large break before it. I do have some things from that time period that i am going to talk about but i also have a lot of new things.
  • The day before the last wanderings show i had another issue with my mini rack, surprise surprise. The external controller for the sata went out again. I already had another internal one ready to go because i was planning on using both but i also had some parts coming in the post that i needed to put in as well and i did not want to take it all apart twice if i didnt have to. So before the show i got the tower disconnected from everything and moved over to my work area. After the show i got out my new electric screwdriver and took basically everything out it including all of the hard drives. I removed the one hard drive that no controller would see, although i will give it one more test before tossing it, and pulled out every cable. I also removed the two 40 mm fans that were making so much noise. They were pulling air up through the drives but i have the 120mm fan at the bottom that is pushing air up through and the power supply that should be doing the same. Then i reran the cables that make it possible for me to pull each drive forward so that i can swap it out if needed and put all of the connections off to one side and ran the power splitter up through the channel to the mount for the power supply. After that i put in the keystone panel and hooked up the hdmi and ethernet cables that i could. Above that goes the new 2.5g network switch that my daughter got me for christmas. behind those goes the power supply and with those fans removed that gave me a lot more room for the extra cables, i should really switch to a small form factor modular power supply but those are expensive. After that i took apart both of the hp minis and put in the new m.2 AE to 2.5g wired connections and ran them through the back. They are a bit precarious because of the cable routing and i will have to do some interesting things with some capton tape but they are seen by the system. Which is another story that we will get to in a few minutes. I also installed the m.2 sata controller and hooked up all the cables to that. This one is a bit more robust than the previous one and will hopefully last more than a couple of months. If this one goes out i will be looking for a different solution in building my nas. With those hooked up and the network cables attached i remounted the rear panel that covers most of the cables and mounted the power supplies to that using some strong double sided tape.
  • With that all back on the rack things were looking a lot better in regards to the cable management but still a bit rough because of the volume. I zip tied the cables for the hard drives over to the side so that they can be replaced as needed and or trouble shot.
  • With it all hooked up and a 2.5g usb c adapter for my main pc, everything was ready for testing. Wow it is quiet now. But niether of the proxmox box’s wanted to start at first unless it was in recovery mode. Turns out a bunch more configuration needs to be done in order for the new nics to act as primary. so in the short term i disconnected the cable from the 2.5’s and back to the original 1.0. This allowed them to start and allowed me to test everything else. The new sata controller was working fine and hopefully it stays that way. i did have to redo all of the drive forwardings for OMV but after that it mapped them correctly and all of my automation worked the same as before. This also verified that the new network switch was working as well as the usb c adapter.
  • Not long after i found out that the new fan was just plain not working. neither of them. I guess they are not the correct model or something because i stripped some of the wiring back around the black and the red and verified that direct power would turn them on. The connectors are the same and while a bit tighter than the old ones they do fit into the same slot on the casing. Oh well had to rehook the old fan which does seem to be working ok for now. I also did the config for the 2.5g and i am seeing that the incoming connection to the router is indeed 2.5g but all the outgoings look to be 1g.  Bit of a bother but it turns out that those 2.5g ae adapters were not really 2.5g only 1.  So i will have to buy some more that dont have fine print in the description and try again.  
  • In the mean time i got one of the two 8tbs that are in my garage pc pulled and after copying everything over i wiped it and hooked it to the mini rack.  The work i did setting up the cables was really useful and it took no time at all.  Passed that one to OMV and got it set up easy enough and will start using it to balance out the other drives.  I also pulled the 4tb but had to print another mounting sled and find some more screws.  I think i am going to move the data from that one to the 8tb and use it as a local storage.  Split it in half and use half of it for the deluge download location and the other half for vm images.  Not sure yet.
  • I also set up searxng on one of my nodes so that i can use that instead of google.com.  I mean the backend still ends up using that but all the tracking is removed as is the weighted responses.  It does look pretty basic but it does the job.  Its odd thought that the setting that switches away from google as your search engine doesnt seem to sync to my other devices the way other setting changes do. 
  • i also set up a VM of CENTOS so that i can follow along with some of the training videos for RHCSA and COMPTIA linux+ Not difficult to do and i am still not that far down that rabbit hole but i need to get some changes in. 
  • We also had that epic winter storm come through.  Which i guess isnt linuxy but i did get a generator for my favorite price.  A friend of a friend ordered one and they accidentally sent him two.  So i got lucky and got one.  We did prep all of the pipes as much as we could, set the faucets to dripping and turned on the heaters for the pipes near the exterior walls.  Also got all of the usb batteries charged and made sure the flashlights were handy just in case.  and because it was cold and i didnt want to be in the garage as much i got the dell venue 11 and the onegx out and was working from inside the house in my nice warm bed with the electric blanket.  
  • This gave me some time to work on some other things as well while i was languishing away from my garage.  I finally got kde connect to work with my wireguard setup.  I tried all of these different settings and even forced an internal ip address but the thing that finally cleared up the issue for me was changing the dns from google to adguard.  I was trying to set it up so that it would look local and i may go back that but for now i am good with it working and me not having to turn my wireguard off and trying to remember to turn it back on before i leave the house.  Now i should never have to turn off my vpn again.  I also set up a second setup on the same wgdashboard instance so i would not mess up the client settings on the one that was using previously.  Its odd though i did not have the same issue with the DNS on the laptop that i was also testing from. But i also checked and it was more than the just the DNS so it had to be the internal IP as well because the original setup did not get fixed when i went in and changed it to the same without manually setting up the internal ip.  
  • Definitely have not been hitting the gym as much either but that has as much to do with January as does with the cold.  I have driven to the gym several times but i am not going to fight for a parking spot and i am not going to pay for multiple gym memberships.  I dont hold it against the January gym goers but it does make things a bit more difficult.  I mention the gym because it is one of those places that i like to test things out from a remote location.  Remote back into the house and use joplin/jellyfin/plex/audiobookshelf and whatever else i have handy.  But it now having been a couple of weeks with the new sata controller, things are still going well.  
  • I have noticed a couple of errors showing up in OMV for one of the drives but i think it is because of the way that it is set up.  It was being passed to OMV but it was also passed to proxmox for use with other things.  I think this was causing some conflicts.  So what i am doing is stopping all of the transactions to it from OMV and copying all the data that i had put on it onto the other 8th drive that i moved over from the garage pc.  then i find where i mount the share to that drive and i modify it so that the mount is  pointing to the new drive and with all of the data there i will not need to update any of the lxcs or vms it will just go forward without the issues.  then i turn off the share for that drive.  Then I get rid of the directory on the node and remove it from the datacenter.  After that i run fsck to check that the drive can be fixed which it does clear up all the issues.  then since all the data i need is copied elsewhere i reformat.  Probably did not need to do the fsck in that case but it did let me know that the drive was probably saveable.  so after the reformat i recreated the directory and on the node and verified it in the datacenter and then moved a vm back to it.  
  • i had some trouble easily figuring out which connected drive it was but the solution was pretty easy.  I got the mount point from the data center information which gave me the spot under /mnt/pve and then df on that mount point gave me the /dev/sd location.  Saved a lot of testing and possible mistakes.  the copy back to it did take a while but i was copying it over from a samba share off of my garage PC.
• Majid
  • Wet and Floody
  • TIVA Models at Work
  • Ultramarine to Kubuntu
  • Son wanted new laptop even though was impressed by Mint
    • Asus Vivobook 225H
  • I hate Windows Part 1: OneDrive
    • Deleted files!
  • I hate Windows Part 2: overwrites bootloader
    • old Yoga 6 to ubuntu problems
      • Mint wouldnt work off the flash drive, something about mok keys
      • somehow got fedora to work via ventoy stick
    • new Yoga 10
      • Ubuntu 25.10 cos newer kernel (AMD AI 750)
      • Random Error
      • ventoy usb had 21.3,but was able to chroot and fix grub
      • initially couldn’t get dual boot options, but then used boot repair and it worked!
  • Did my testing of ubuntu budgie, was going to try LMDE but decided onto cachyos cinnamon
  • More earbuds; soundcore
  • Next project will be postmarketos
  • Winter King vs Pendragon
  • Under Salt Marsh
  • Rewatched Pacific Rim
  • Genshin Impact is 40gb!
  • Megadeth version of Ride the Lightening is epic.
  • Finished 168 songs, now back to Apple in China
• Charles
• Jim
  • Mint 22.3 User Interface Changes
    • Cinnamon version 6.4.8 updated to 6.6.6. Significant menu changes. Avatar is removable, b/w categories too.
      • Default left sidebar much wider, can’t make it small like before or remove favorite app description text.
      • Shut Down, Log Out, and Lock Screen buttons now horizontal- can’t make them vertical again
      • Can switch Search box from bottom to top which is good
    • Nemo 6.4.5 updated to Nemo 6.6.3 so icons on the sidebar look a bit different but not bothersome
    • Removable Drive icon on panel changed too, but not a big deal.
  • Cinnamenu applet imperfect solution to make the menu look like before
    • Can make it look very much like the old menu with vertical Shut Down, Log Out, Lock Screen and favorites
      • But not possible to place the sidebar to the left while having the search bar at the top like the old menu!
      • Apps also to not fly out to the right and reveal themselves on mouse over of the categories like the old menu, instead one must click on the app categories which is slow & awkward
  • Configurable Menu applet best option to recreate the old menu
    • Fork of the Cinnamon menu applet to add vertical system buttons & remove sidebar text
      • https://github.com/JohnDoe8771/ConfigurableMenu/releases/tag/v1.0.0
        • One minor gripe- one cannot navigate to the system buttons on the left sidebar using only the keyboard like on the old Cinnamon menu.
  • Software:
    • WINE 11 forced to add repository from WINE HQ and re-install WINE after a standard update removed WINE 10
    • Steam from .deb file on Linux Mint laptop for Tabletop Simulator board game playing engine
    • Notesnook Task List: I inadvertently unlocked a paywalled feature via markdown import
    • VLC Open Capture Device to check live webcam stream if Webcamtests.com goes down again
    • Legal sportsbook in Florida geo-location plugin doesn’t work in Linux (Win & Mac only). So use smartphone
  • GhostBSD
    • Cinnamon desktop trivial to install & working great after Eric the developer helped me fix the system time
    • Brother Printer added pretty easily as a network device, if not completely automatically like in Linux Mint
    • Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera immediately recognized as a webcam just like on Linux
    • OpenVPN troubleshooting with Surfshark is one of the last remaining hurdles
  • Media I enjoyed in the last month
    • Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe (Paperback ed. 2019) by Laurence Bergreen
    • The Naked Gun with Liam Neeson & Pamela Anderson, not too long of a running time at 1:25:00, really 1:15:00 before the extra-long credits
    • Judy Justice season 4 is back on Prime
    • UK TV Alert: Dragons Den UK season 23, similar to Shark Tank in the U.S. and The Apprentice season 20 starring Lord Sugar with the boardroom in the first episode starting in Hong Kong premiered this week

— Play Vibrations Transition Bumper —

Vibrations from the Ether

20 minutes (~5 minutes each)

— Play Check This Transition Bumper —

Check This Out

10 minutes

• Triboot Android, Linux and Windows

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

• Next Episode – 2 pm US Central time on Sunday, February 15, 2026.
• Get mintCast converted to your time zone
• Next Saturday we will host a Roundtable Live Stream. Please come and join us using the Discord voice channel at 2 pm US Central time on Saturday, February 7, 2026.
• Get the Roundtable Live Stream converted to your time zone
• Livestream information is at mintcast.org/livestream

Wrap-up

• Joe – Tllts.org,  linuxlugcast.com, [email protected], Buy Joe a coffee
• Moss – Full Circle Weekly News, [email protected], Mastodon @[email protected], occasionally on HPR
• Bill – [email protected], Bill_H on Discord, @[email protected] on Mastodon, also checkout the other podcast I am on, Linux OTC (with Eric & Majid).
• Majid – [email protected] @[email protected], Atypical.doctor on Instagram and Threads and The Atypical Doctor Podcast and also Linux OTC and Distrohoppers Digest.
• Eric – I can be reached by email at [email protected].
• Charles – [email protected], Mr PDX on Discord
• Jim– [email protected], GNU2Linux on Discord, The Linux Shortcut on YouTube

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 —