Episode 480 Show Notes

Welcome to mintCast

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

This is Episode 480!

Recorded on Sunday, March 1, 2026.

Still working way too hard Joe; … Moss; Sick, but I’m here, I’m Bill; … Majid; … Eric; …Charles; glad I don’t live in California, I’m Jim

— Play Standard Intro —

  • First up in the news: California is doing its thing again
  • In security and privacy:
  • Then in our Wanderings: Bill does it while sick, Joe does a lot, Jim plays with ghost
  • 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 https://mintcast.org/show-notes/episode-480-show-notes/

— Play News Transition Bumper —

The News

20 minutes

— Play Wanderings Transition Bumper —

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

30 minutes (~5-8 mins each)

  • Bill
    • I’ve been fighting the flu off and on for weeks.
    • Bought a new CHUWI laptop. I now have 3. I bought a Freebook 13.5 inch. It has the same processor as my Gemibook 15, an N100, which is a step up from the dual core celeron in the Herobook.
    • In the process of switching two of the servers running motherboards from Thinkcentre M93p’s to Supermicro X10SLL-F. I purchased 3 of them from Ebay for a decent price. They are from the same 4th gen as the M93p’s but I have fairly beefy Xeon E-31270 V3 processors for them. These boards are made for servers, and will make better use of the Xeon capabilities, as well as the ability to address ECC Ram. I’m not sure if it means any practical advantage in terms of performance or capacity, but there you go.
    • I’m not sure how I feel about it, but I’ve been replacing switches in my house with Amazon Basics smart switches. These things work with Alexa. I’ve avoided this solution for a while because I didn’t really understand how the whole “smart home” thing works. I thought there needed to be some concept of a “hub” to control everything. You have to install the “Alexa” app on your phone to set up the switches but once the first one is set up, subsequent switches are just auto-discovered. Right now I’m just using them for the outside lights so I can set a routine to turn them on and off at sundown and sunrise, respectively. A solution I had in place prior to this was some honeywell switches which didn’t connect to anything. They simply had a clock which had to be set manually.
  • Joe
    • Kinda odd but the mini rack has not had a problem so far so i have had nothing to fix on it.  I did reorder those m.2 ae adapters to 2.5g so those should be coming in shortly and need to be swapped out.  At which time i will have a project or two that i want to work on.  I also connected the 4tb drive next to the 8tb drives on the mini rack and passed it though to OMV and left all of the data on it for now.  I think i may switch things around and move all of my audiobooks and immich pics onto it so that it is all separated from the tv shows and movies.  did a bit of data balancing and got all of the movies except for the kids movies onto that newly added 8tb and i am thinking of getting rid of the kids section entirely and just merging it all together since my kids are a bit older now and some of the organization makes zero sense.  
    • I also picked up a low cost 2.5g pcie card for the garage pc since the usb one is not being seen as 2.5g. But at the same time i am going to be putting that in i am going to install the old 8tb drive that was having trouble being seen since it will not be on the same controller and also i was able to find an old dvr at the resale and i have had my e out for them for a while since most of them have a 1tb hdd in them.  This one did too.  So i was able to pick up a 1tb drive for 5 dollars.  That is pretty cool.  I dont know how many hours or anything that it has on it at this point but it will be fun to find out.  I was also able to get a small 4 pin fan and sata extender and a whole but of screws for later use in other projects.  
    • The garage PC has also been making a bit of noise like it is getting warm.  It has not been that hot in my garage yet so while i have it down i am going to check and replace the thermal paste.  Not going to use anything special but i think i have some thermal grizzly floating around somewhere.  I still need to get another motherboard for the old garage PC and see if that fixes the issues.  Hopefully it is the motherboard and not the CPU.  But it will also depend on what board i am able to find on how the build will get done.  I prefer a MATX or MITX but i could use a different case and go full size.  Only problem with the itx is that it will likely only have the one pci slot and that will have to have a graphics cards in it.  But i have seen some interesting 3d prints for MITX and 10 inch racks.  Almost time to start making another one.  Actually i might do that anyway just a bit smaller.  maybe do a setup in the living room with the old network switch and the lenovo mini pc that is out there along with a modified version of the 2.5 inch drive bay that i made before and did not end up using because the controllers kept dying.  These being laptop droves they will be a lot easier to power and i will just need to find a way to hook them up to data.  I should have some 12v power supplies and i can order the adapters for them to convert to sata.  I will also have to see how the lenovo has its m.2 setup.  I may have to do something crazy and hook them all up to a usb hub for data.  The pigtail adapters are about 10 dollars each and would require 2 and the USB to sata data adapters are also 10 each but would require 4 for a 4 drive setup so already looking at 60 dollars since i already have the 12v power supplies.  Yeah it may be a little while before i get to all of this project.
    • Well i am happy to say that the 8tb drive that i thought was bad actually isnt.  I was able to find an old DVR for 5 dollars at the consignment and i had heard that most of them have a 1tb hdd in them and for the price i figured it was worth the chance.  And sure enough it did have a drive in it.  So after pulling that and the sata extension cable as well as a small 4 pin fan i grabbed the hdd and the 8tb as well as the pci 2.5g nic card and took down my garage PC.  I should have done the thermal paste at the same time but i wanted to test things and looking at the CPU fan i think i may want to upgrade.  Also i dont like the board.  so i may redo the whole thing.  But i got the drives hooked up and the NIC setup and everything is working.  The 8tb drive had one seek error on the smart data and the 1tb is showing as old but the seek error was probably caused by the controller and looks to be working.  I formatted the drives and they will stay on the garage PC for now.  The NIC is showing as 2.5g and is coming up on the network switch the same.  
    • I did shut down the LXC for readarr, i thought it was useful for tracking what books i did and did not have and would track new book from the authors that i enjoy but it is out of support and when it does work it is causing me more problems than it is helping.  So it is shit down for now.  I need to spend some time updating my homeassistant to get everything working the way it should.  
    • I also wrote an updated version of my travel routing article.  I seem to need to redo it every couple of years but i like putting it all together.  Now i just need to find a good place to post it that it may get some traction.  And yes i am aware that the articles are not that different but its the small updates that are important.
    • So the 2,5g adapters did arrive and get put into the two machines on the mini rack.  While i had it open to do that i also replaced the loud fan in the one device.  For some reason on the one machine the sata controller decided to stop working but i was able to get it seen and going again after some reseating and some powering on and off.  Hopefully that is not a sign of things to come.  The other machine worked fine but for some reason virtualization turned itself off.  So i had to go into the bios to fix it.  I dont know why.  But everything is up and running and for internal networking the speeds for file moves are somewhat faster.  I am sure that i could get it even higher if i were to implement a raid system or switch to all ssds but this is a good enough upgrade for now.  
    • I pulled out all of my portable routers and the repurposed mesh routers and gave them a going over to make sure that they all work.  All expect one of them that i need to go back to i mean.  I have some that many years old and even one that only support 10/100 and is not setup for openwrt.  I kinda figured that it would not be all that useful so i set it aside,  I have one that is very tiny, has 10/100/1000, a usb port and dual nics.  It is older and has no 5g band but i think that with the dual nics it is still very useful on the go.  Plus i was able to get easytether on it and connect it to my phone.  The next thing to do with it is to set it up in my car and give myself a hotspot on the go.  I will set my android auto head unit to connect to it and i will be be able to charge my phone at the same time by hooking up one cable. The mesh routers are currently all set up as wifi bridges except for one that is setup as normal router and then my primary tp-link device is also set to bridge for now but tend to reset that often.  Also made sure that all the devices that can are able to access wireguard with a couple of clicks if i want them to be attached to my home network. 
    • Since i had the correct nics in the rack now i also decided to set up something else that had come into my head.  Some background.  I have an instance of openwrt running in an LXC that has  VPN.  I can set any LXC or VM to use that VPN with a bit of tinkering in the settings.  My original thought was to share the old 1g ethernet port with the openwrt LXC and just have it as an output for the VPN so anything that connects to it also is going over the VPN.  Having done some research it is not a simple or straightforward thing to do.  I am sure that there is another way to do it within proxmox itself and probably easy enough that no one thinks to write it down but i cant seem to get it to work.  In the end i mostly got tired of the research when i remembered that it is super easy to do in linuxmint and that i have a VM that uses that VPN.  So i cheated and did it the easy way by passing the entire NIC to the VM and then sharing it to other computers in the settings.  I have the old 8 port that i previously had on the rack that i can use and i also have a nice 5 port if i want to use a smaller one.  But i think for now i am going to take that old 10/100 portable router which is 5v and pretty darn small and hook that to it.  This will provide a wifi connection to an external VPN if that is needed or wanted.  
    • I have printed a 10 port panel for keystone passthrough couplers which i thought i had room for on back of my device but now i am thinking that i dont.  So i may need to order some petg again for my printer and get a 2u or 3u extension for the top which should let me put on the switch and the panel on the rear of the device and maybe at the front i will put a small screen.  One of my friends from the linuxlugcast is practicing making ethernet cables so agreed to send me ten 1 foot long cat 6 cables.  This will allow me to extend the setup that i currently have and make it so that the cables that are going to other devices in the room can be disconnected much more easily making it much less difficult to pick the thing up and move it for maintenance instead of having to reach all the way into to it to disconnect the inbound cable and the one to the garage PC and my workstation for work.  
    • I also reprinted the top shelf that i have for the rack as the old one just couldnt handle the weight. I printed the new one thicker and as all one piece instead of two but kept in the holes that i use for mounting the monitor that i currently use with it.  Well the smaller one anyway.  I think the new shelf should do better with pla since that has a bit more rigidity.  But if i do set up the next 2/3u i may need to make it not go all the way back so the new parts can fix and not too much height is added. 
    • Did i mention that i was on vacation for a week of this so had plenty of time to experiment with whatever came into my head?  Plus while on vacation i was also studying for the comptia linux+ through youtube videos while doing most of this.  As well as going to the gym and visiting with friends and helping out the wife that was not feeling well, cleaning my house, finishing up cutting  the firewood in the backyard, designing a new brick firepit for the backyard in my head cause my brain wasnt occupied enough obviously, designing and printing that top shelf for the rack rewritting that article and that was only by Tuesday.
    • I did slow down for the rest of the week though. But the Acer PC that i have been using as a replacement for my garage PC was having an issue with overheating. I had been pricing motherboards for days between the two devices to see if i could come up with a solution that was not so bad but i decided to give the old motherboard one last look through to see if i could find what was wrong. So i started testing again from the top. Power supply and anything that was connected. removed the usb headers for the front panel and then the front panel connections to take the whole board out so i could test outside the case and when i decided to test the power supply one more time but since i didnt have the front IO connected i jumped the pins and the thing powered right on. I thought that was a little interesting but to test i swapped the leads for the reset switch with the power and that still did not work. I then took apart the front panel and tested the momentary switches with my multi meter directly and neither one was working. Thankfully i had some that were the correct size and a soldering iron. Did not take long but the switches were working again in short order. I then moved the drives back to it after a quick print for one of the drive caddies that i could not find, moved over the 2.5g nic and powered it up for testing. There was some issues with the ram but i dont know if that is the mobo or the ram that i have as i was also noticing some issues in the other board. But i found the best configuration and put in the graphics card that i got from bill and put the whole thing into its new home and reconnected all of the peripherals. I did have to dig out my other adapters from display port to HDMI but the system was up and running and working better than ever. Granted i have no idea why both momentary switches went out at the same time.  I did remove the cooler and check the thermal paste and i am glad that i did because it was very dried out.  
    • The Acer pc i did take apart and check, the thermal paste was fine.  So right now i have no idea why it was overheating.  It does not have a good enough power supply for me to put in a graphics card in but i think it may do well with a better cooler and a pcie 2.5g multi port nic if i want to build my own router with openwrt or pfsense.  But then i would still need to have a quality wifi setup.  It is something to look for in the future as i think my 10 year old router is starting to have problems with the 2.4ghz band dropping off and needing to restart.  I cant complain, i have put the thing through its paces over the years.  
    • I also had some of my useful 3d prints start to fall apart.  The Mic mount that i use for this show, the headset hanger that goes on the back of my table and the foot pedal that i have on my usb switcher that i use all the time.  All of them were several years old so i did not do anything to update them i just rerpinted them as is and put them back into production.  I also started using contact lenses along with my glasses so i have 3d printed some glasses cases so that i can carry around the supplies so that i can make the switch back to my glasses if i need to.  i am looking into tpu for the inside of the cases and for some custom designs that will allow my to more easily keep the contacts cases and eye drops in the same case without just having a massive case.
  • Jim
    • GhostBSD Progress
      • Cyberboard, an ancient Windows board game playing aide for play-by-email play created in 1994, and last updated in 2010, is now working great since I installed WINE 10.0, WINE Proton & WINE Mono through the Software Station. The key trick was to launch the .exe in the terminal once and it successfully prompted me to download the 32-bit binaries & dependencies. Then when a system update this past week upgraded WINE to version 11.0, keeping it almost at pace with Linux, just had to repeat those steps.
      • VASSAL board game playing aide for live and asynchronous play. Downloaded the “Other” zip file from their web site for non-Windows, Mac & Linux operating systems. The application works via java, so this cross-platform program is working fine without installation per se as long as jdk is installed like with Libre Office.
        • Added both apps to the Games sub-menu in Cinnamon with appropriate icons and correct paths to the files to successfully to launch them with Super key launcher. The Windows app requires a weird Unix string as part of the command that I never would have figured out without seeing it a long time ago on SuperUser or something like that .
        • No /opt directory in GhostBSD (or FreeBSD), so elected to create a directory in /usr/local/opt according to their file hierarchy and place those apps not from the Software Station in directories inside of /opt.
      • Dropbox. No desktop app for FreeBSD, so must use CLI app or browser to upload or download files, neither of which have automatic sync. You can use Nextcloud or another solution for automatically syncing files which has a client for FreeBSD, but if you must use Dropbox a partial alternate solution to at least enable notifications if not automatic sync is to Follow the folders you are sharing with others in Dropbox web interface to get notified of uploaded or deleted files, which sends an email to the associated account. Then leave open a tab logged in to Yahoo mail (or similar) and enable desktop notifications in Yahoo email and allow in Firefox settings. (Optional: Use HideMyTabs Firefox extension in Firefox to hide the Yahoo mail tab so it’s not in the way and it still gives notifications on the Cinnamon desktop similar to how the Dropbox app would would.)
      • OpenVPN: I now have Surfshark, my paid VPN, working through openvpn which I downloaded from the Software Station. Just needed to use wget to download an archive of the 284 config files with a .ovpn extension for all the various city location nodes from the Surfshark web site, place them in a directory of my choice, and use the terminal to make the VPN connection using an account specific unique Auth Username and Auth Password (not the regular username and password for GUI apps on Linux or Android) like so: sudo openvpn followed by a direct or relative link to the .opvn file for the city you want to connect to. For example to connect to London, UK:
        • sudo openvpn /usr/local/etc/openvpn/uk-lon.prod.surfshark.com_udp.ovpn
        • Aliases: It now occurs to me that I could create shorter aliases in Fish, Ghost BSD’s default shell for all these 142 separate locations like miami, nyc, london, etc so I don’t have to manually look those up and type them in as part of the sudo openvpn command. And also keep the Auth Username and Auth password credentials on the Clipboard manager CopyQ or somewhere else to quickly copy and paste them into the prompts in the terminal to make these connections quickly. Might even be faster than using a GUI app in Linux. This was one of the very last hurdles to get GhostBSD as easy to use as Linux Mint for me with the same software, so I’m quite happy that it works.
    • Surfshark VPN, $59 for 27 months initial signup deal in late 2020, then renewed for $59 per year in early 2023, 2024, and 2025 on auto-pay. This time I purposefully let it expire and within 48 hours I got an email with a coupon code inviting me to return with my same account for 28 months for $50.
    • Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder. Portable Window .exe, great for comparing and eliminating duplicate photos
    • Video Duplicate Finder: A cross-platform application to find and eliminate duplicate videos and photos.
    • Librera FD, free eBook reader for Android to read PDFs downloaded from Internet Archive with the Firefox extension or other formats. Working so great on Fire HD 8 Tablet. Makes Calibre seem over-engineered, clunky and unnecessary unless you are managing a gigantic library or doing format conversions. [show device with cover thumbnails]
    • Media I Enjoyed in the last month:
      • Book:
        • Columbus: The Four Voyages 1492-1504 by Laurence Bergreen (same author as the Magellan book)
      • Movies:
        • Together. Supernatural body horror film starring real life couple Dave Franco and Allison Brie vaguely akin to The Substance except instead of changing into a younger body it’s about being forced to merge bodies.(Hulu)
        • The Long Walk, an R-rated Stephen King adaptation of his first written work (not published) as Richard Bachman. Well acted by a cast of young actors and an over the top performance by Mark Hamill as the heavy. Very violent, with a slightly disappointing ending.
      • TV:
        • Family Guy, new season started last weekend on Fox. Funny debut episode, rare one with no silly cutaways. Two new episodes debuting each Sunday for the next few weeks.
        • The Simpsons is doing the same with two episodes on Fox on Sunday evenings.
        • American Dad is back on free TV after years on streaming, Sunday evening on Fox.

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

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