3d printing – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Sun, 24 May 2026 21:24:20 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png 3d printing – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 164426984 486 – HTPC Like It’s 2003! https://mintcast.org/486-htpc-like-its-2003/ Sun, 24 May 2026 21:24:19 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7963 First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – May

Then in our Wanderings: Bill pays the bills, Joe solders the irons and Jim fins the jelly

]]> First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – May

Then in our Wanderings: Bill pays the bills, Joe solders the irons and Jim fins the jelly

Link To Full Show Notes

The News:

Mint Monthly News

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • 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,
  • 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!>

]]> 7963 466 – Print All The Things https://mintcast.org/466-print-all-the-things/ Sun, 17 Aug 2025 21:27:11 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7600 First up in The News: Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara” BETA Release, The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) project is seeking increased sponsorship, and CachyOS Topped DistroWatch’s Rankings

In our Innards section: Joe goes hard on some 3D printing

In Check This Out, Charles gives us an overview of Pass Key

And finally, in Vibrations from the Ether, feedback and a couple of suggestions

]]> First up in The News: Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara” BETA Release, The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) project is seeking increased sponsorship, and CachyOS Topped DistroWatch’s Rankings

In our Innards section: Joe goes hard on some 3D printing

In Check This Out, Charles gives us an overview of Pass Key

And finally, in Vibrations from the Ether, feedback and a couple of suggestions

Link To Full Show Notes

The News:


Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara” – BETA Release

CachyOS Topped DistroWatch’s Rankings

The Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS) project is seeking increased sponsorship

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • 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!>
]]> 7600 394 – With music on our side to break the old hard drives https://mintcast.org/394-with-music-on-our-side-to-break-the-old-hard-drives/ Fri, 26 Aug 2022 15:20:07 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5598 In security and privacy, Discord and your passwords are pythoned, and hard drives apparently have a taste in music
Then in our Wanderings, Joe plays with his handheld, Bill is setting up a new server, Moss skips the assault and gets a couple batteries, and Norbert has had done some things.
Download
]]> 1:25 The News
16:15 Security and Privacy
26:03 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:22:59 Housekeeping and Announcements

First up in the news, The Kernel gets a bump, LibreOffice adds a point, Android 13 is out if you have a Pixel, and Gnome has a birthday,

In security and privacy, Discord and your passwords are pythoned, and hard drives apparently have a taste in music

Then in our Wanderings, Joe plays with his handheld, Bill is setting up a new server, Moss skips the assault and gets a couple batteries, and Norbert has had done some things.

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit. Youtube.

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Announcements

Wrap-up

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible:

  • Norbert, Londoner, Tony H, and all others for our audio editing
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 5598 376 – Joe, Do You Copy? https://mintcast.org/376-joe-do-you-copy/ Sun, 19 Dec 2021 18:40:05 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5299 In security, Ubuntu Kernel Security Patches, FGKASLR gets closer to mainline, Data stealing malware hides on Linux servers, Go Daddy data breach
In our Wanderings, Joe does some 3d printing, Josh got a new monitor, Norbert switches OS’s, and Clayton looks back
Download
]]> 1:46 The News
16:16 Security Update
23:52 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
52:38 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news, Linux Mint monthly news, Europe embraces open source, Debian has browser issues, Fedora goes all in on Wayland, Firefox helps you fight spam, And the Linux kernel gets rusty

In security, Ubuntu Kernel Security Patches, FGKASLR gets closer to mainline, Data stealing malware hides on Linux servers, Go Daddy data breach

In our Wanderings, Joe does some 3d printing, Josh got a new monitor, Norbert switches OS’s, and Clayton looks back

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit. Youtube.

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

  • Joe
    • 3d printing, crypto, food
  • Josh
    • Health, monitors, outdoors
  • Norbert
    • Debian testing, Gnome, Japanese
  • Clayton
    • The old days, SSD’s, printing

Announcements

Wrap-up

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5299 367.5 – Not Talkin’ Shop https://mintcast.org/367-5-not-talkin-shop/ Wed, 18 Aug 2021 05:22:30 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5174 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 2:03 Linux Innards
43:38 Vibrations from the Ether
52:35 Check this Out
55:29 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we talk hobbies

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

Linux Innards

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Brad A.
  • Liz T.
    • https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Multihead#VGA1_left_of_HDMI1_at_their_preferred_resolutions

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5174 mintCast 363 – Audacity Rewind https://mintcast.org/mintcast-363-audacity-rewind/ Wed, 16 Jun 2021 17:43:40 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5100 Then, our news we have a Linux Mint update, Audacity backtracks, a top 10 and OBS’s wayland support
In security, polkit
Download
]]> 2:33 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
43:26 The News
1:26:28 Security Update
1:29:58 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I miss a delivery, Joe forgets to backup, Bo tinkers with pipewire, and Tony turns the amperage up to 10.

Then, our news we have a Linux Mint update, Audacity backtracks, a top 10 and OBS’s wayland support

In security, polkit

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

The News

Security Update

Announcements: 

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5100 mintCast 362 – The Takeover https://mintcast.org/mintcast-362-the-takeover/ Wed, 02 Jun 2021 06:54:23 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5082 Then in our news, Freenode taken over by Andrew Lee and Ubuntu and Fedora abandon ship, Material Shell for Gnome 40, Fedora 32 is end of life, and more
Download
]]> Download

3:02 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:06:36 The News
1:34:45 Security Update
1:44:36 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been system building, Joe has been playing with his new 3D printer, Bo has range anxiety and Tony has been learning about creating YouTube videos

Then in our news, Freenode taken over by Andrew Lee and Ubuntu and Fedora abandon ship, Material Shell for Gnome 40, Fedora 32 is end of life, and more

In security, a Linux rootkit that shows its face…fish.

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5082 mintCast 361 – The Launch Launch https://mintcast.org/mintcast-361-the-launch-launch/ Wed, 19 May 2021 06:30:07 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5067 Then, our news Audacity gets bought up, System76 Launches the Launch, and LibreOffice Lets you Search!
In security, the death of CAPTCHA
Download
]]> Download

2:16 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
38:33 The News
1:02:53 Security Update
1:19:36 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I start building, Joe writes with a pinecil, Tony upgrades, Josh fights a game, and Bo tries to leaf.

Then, our news Audacity gets bought up, System76 Launches the Launch, and LibreOffice Lets you Search!

In security, the death of CAPTCHA

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • We’re putting OGG to sleep. Forever.
    • Mp3 has been patentless for more than three years now and that’s free enough for us. It cuts down on back end workload since we do most everything manually when it comes to getting the show out there.
    • No need to change feeds! The mp3 will now come down in the OGG feed. Just don’t look under the covers, and hopefully absolutely nothing noticeable will change.
  • Moss extended hiatus
  • The New Saturday Show (mintNight? mintTalk? No official name yet.)
  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm US Central time on May 30, 2021.
  • Get the show time converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5067 mintCast 352 – Repredictability (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-352-repredictability-mp3/ Wed, 13 Jan 2021 05:03:17 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4866 Then in the news, Linux Mint 20.1 is here, the M1 gets closer, Firefox gets a facelift and Project Lenix makes more progress 
In security, what’s going on with Qt6?
Download
]]> Download

1:41 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
33:10 News
1:02:08 Security Update
1:08:04 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been playing with Docker, Joe got a 1up, Tony bundles up again, and Josh re-predicts

Then in the news, Linux Mint 20.1 is here, the M1 gets closer, Firefox gets a facelift and Project Lenix makes more progress 

In security, what’s going on with Qt6?

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • My focus has been at work and editing Linux User Space these past couple of weeks.
    • I am finally going to put Aaron’s Docker compose file to good use to get a long term Gitea instance now that my NAS is settled and running well.
  • Joe
    • Got the screen adapter for the Arcade1Up machine.  Still need to finish putting it together
    • 3d printed a part for listener Dustin for a pair of headphones that I had sent him.
      • Had to switch to pla for the print
      • Happy to say that it printed perfectly and seemed very sturdy using the gcode that I had used before for the same print
      • Sad to say that this means that I need to go back to tweaking the settings for PETG.  Slow it down even more and see if that gets the prints to turn out right
    • Was able to fix the Samsung Galaxy Gear S3 Frontier watch with a 15 dollar part from ebay
      • I had purchased a broken motherboard for the watch that was only supposed to have issues with the heart rate sensor and the pedometer so that I could verify that the screen was working correctly
      • The screen does work and most of the functions on the watch itself works as well
      • Thought that I got lucky and the pedometer and the heart rate monitor were correct.  I verified that the heart rate monitor was working by comparing it to my other watch and everything seemed to be fine.  I did see that the number of steps were being counted but when I compared it to my phone over the course of the day the number on the watch was lower than the phone.  This should not be the case it should be the other way around.  
      • Then i found out that the watch was showing that i was going up and down stairs all day so i ordered another one and will be getting it soon in order to do another fix
      • I am giving my other watch to my wife to see if she likes it or not.  If not, I will probably sell it.
    • Got a family portrait coming in a few months. The pictures were taken for it
      • We won a raffle for it but there was still a lot of cost involved because we wanted the larger size because it comes with a couple of extra 10 inch paintings that we can send to the rest of the family
      • Way more money than i wanted to pay but with my eldest child turning 18 I really want to get it done whilst the kids have no choice in the matter
      • But it is a rather large expense for me and I don’t want to go through that same company in order to get the frame
      • I could really use some suggestions and knowledge on framing.  If you have any knowledge on the subject please advise me on the best way to frame a museum quality painting, please email me jb@mintcast.org
  • Tony Hughes
    • Not a lot going on here as we went into another stay at home order right after New Year, so I have been baking, modeling and watching other people modeling on YouTube.
    • On a good note regarding the Virus, my wife has now had the FULL vaccination as she works in the critical care department of our local hospital in an admin role. She was lucky to get her second dose just before they changed it to be 12 weeks after the first, the day after she had her second injection. This will reduce my risk considerably given where she works.
    • On the Diecast modeling as it is winter and my paintshop is in the garage which is not heated. So I have mainly been preparing models for the paint stage so dismantling them, drilling and taping the posts ready for reassembly and paint stripping then storing for later paint and reassembly. I will also print the decals needed for those models that require them at the reassembly stage.   
    • Very quiet Linux wise although last night I installed the Mint 20.1 upgrade onto my main Laptop which we will be talking about later. 
  • Josh Hawk
    •  First to clarify my predictions.
      • 1. Linux phones will double in number and power in 2021.
        • What I mean by number is the amount of phones on the market.
        • What I mean by power is a benchmark score would be doubled.
        • Only to include phones that use an official Linux kernel.
      • 2. All mainstream cable tv channels will switch to apps.
        • I know they all have apps now but what I meant was they will all have an app that requires a monthly subscription to access. Such as Discovery+ and the likes.
        • I do not mean that cable tv will die and only have apps with subscriptions but will have cable tv broadcasts and the option to use their streaming service with a small monthly fee.
      • 3. Firefox will be given to the community.
        • I don’t think that would be a totally bad thing depending on who picked up the code base.
    •      I put a poll on the mintcast group asking what distro I should use for a year long run on my main laptop. The consensus was Arch Linux and I have been working since then to get it installed and functional on that laptop.  I have the base system installed at this point and it boots but no desktop yet because I cannot get wifi connection even though I had it on the live usb. I am working with cryptodan and londoner on the issue. Finally I got WIFi working and I got to install my desktop (Cinnamon of course). I actually had to use nmcli to finally connect to wifi instead of iwd that I was using but was not working. Once I got WiFi working it was a few simple installs and I had a desktop but I did run into one more issue. After installing the desktop and lightdm I was greeted with “Failed to load light display manager” and found out I needed what was called the  lightdm-gtk-greeter and then it would load the login screen.
    • I have been working on my HP server at my parents house. I had to replace 3 drives that must have been damaged in shipping and learn how to set up hardware RAID. I finally got openSUSE Leap 15.2 installed but the wifi card I was using to install would not work once openSUSE Leap 15.2 was installed. I have since ordered some ethernet over powerline adapters to see if that solves my internet woes. The powerline ethernet was the plan all along but I was just wanting to get the system set up at least and I had the wifi usb dongle already so I figured i’d use that till it didn’t work. 

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4866 mintCast 352 – Repredictability https://mintcast.org/mintcast-352-repredictability/ Wed, 13 Jan 2021 05:03:12 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4862 Then in the news, Linux Mint 20.1 is here, the M1 gets closer, Firefox gets a facelift and Project Lenix makes more progress 
In security, what’s going on with Qt6?
Download
]]> Download

1:41 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
33:10 News
1:02:08 Security Update
1:08:04 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been playing with Docker, Joe got a 1up, Tony bundles up again, and Josh re-predicts

Then in the news, Linux Mint 20.1 is here, the M1 gets closer, Firefox gets a facelift and Project Lenix makes more progress 

In security, what’s going on with Qt6?

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • My focus has been at work and editing Linux User Space these past couple of weeks.
    • I am finally going to put Aaron’s Docker compose file to good use to get a long term Gitea instance now that my NAS is settled and running well.
  • Joe
    • Got the screen adapter for the Arcade1Up machine.  Still need to finish putting it together
    • 3d printed a part for listener Dustin for a pair of headphones that I had sent him.
      • Had to switch to pla for the print
      • Happy to say that it printed perfectly and seemed very sturdy using the gcode that I had used before for the same print
      • Sad to say that this means that I need to go back to tweaking the settings for PETG.  Slow it down even more and see if that gets the prints to turn out right
    • Was able to fix the Samsung Galaxy Gear S3 Frontier watch with a 15 dollar part from ebay
      • I had purchased a broken motherboard for the watch that was only supposed to have issues with the heart rate sensor and the pedometer so that I could verify that the screen was working correctly
      • The screen does work and most of the functions on the watch itself works as well
      • Thought that I got lucky and the pedometer and the heart rate monitor were correct.  I verified that the heart rate monitor was working by comparing it to my other watch and everything seemed to be fine.  I did see that the number of steps were being counted but when I compared it to my phone over the course of the day the number on the watch was lower than the phone.  This should not be the case it should be the other way around.  
      • Then i found out that the watch was showing that i was going up and down stairs all day so i ordered another one and will be getting it soon in order to do another fix
      • I am giving my other watch to my wife to see if she likes it or not.  If not, I will probably sell it.
    • Got a family portrait coming in a few months. The pictures were taken for it
      • We won a raffle for it but there was still a lot of cost involved because we wanted the larger size because it comes with a couple of extra 10 inch paintings that we can send to the rest of the family
      • Way more money than i wanted to pay but with my eldest child turning 18 I really want to get it done whilst the kids have no choice in the matter
      • But it is a rather large expense for me and I don’t want to go through that same company in order to get the frame
      • I could really use some suggestions and knowledge on framing.  If you have any knowledge on the subject please advise me on the best way to frame a museum quality painting, please email me jb@mintcast.org
  • Tony Hughes
    • Not a lot going on here as we went into another stay at home order right after New Year, so I have been baking, modeling and watching other people modeling on YouTube.
    • On a good note regarding the Virus, my wife has now had the FULL vaccination as she works in the critical care department of our local hospital in an admin role. She was lucky to get her second dose just before they changed it to be 12 weeks after the first, the day after she had her second injection. This will reduce my risk considerably given where she works.
    • On the Diecast modeling as it is winter and my paintshop is in the garage which is not heated. So I have mainly been preparing models for the paint stage so dismantling them, drilling and taping the posts ready for reassembly and paint stripping then storing for later paint and reassembly. I will also print the decals needed for those models that require them at the reassembly stage.   
    • Very quiet Linux wise although last night I installed the Mint 20.1 upgrade onto my main Laptop which we will be talking about later. 
  • Josh Hawk
    •  First to clarify my predictions.
      • 1. Linux phones will double in number and power in 2021.
        • What I mean by number is the amount of phones on the market.
        • What I mean by power is a benchmark score would be doubled.
        • Only to include phones that use an official Linux kernel.
      • 2. All mainstream cable tv channels will switch to apps.
        • I know they all have apps now but what I meant was they will all have an app that requires a monthly subscription to access. Such as Discovery+ and the likes.
        • I do not mean that cable tv will die and only have apps with subscriptions but will have cable tv broadcasts and the option to use their streaming service with a small monthly fee.
      • 3. Firefox will be given to the community.
        • I don’t think that would be a totally bad thing depending on who picked up the code base.
    •      I put a poll on the mintcast group asking what distro I should use for a year long run on my main laptop. The consensus was Arch Linux and I have been working since then to get it installed and functional on that laptop.  I have the base system installed at this point and it boots but no desktop yet because I cannot get wifi connection even though I had it on the live usb. I am working with cryptodan and londoner on the issue. Finally I got WIFi working and I got to install my desktop (Cinnamon of course). I actually had to use nmcli to finally connect to wifi instead of iwd that I was using but was not working. Once I got WiFi working it was a few simple installs and I had a desktop but I did run into one more issue. After installing the desktop and lightdm I was greeted with “Failed to load light display manager” and found out I needed what was called the  lightdm-gtk-greeter and then it would load the login screen.
    • I have been working on my HP server at my parents house. I had to replace 3 drives that must have been damaged in shipping and learn how to set up hardware RAID. I finally got openSUSE Leap 15.2 installed but the wifi card I was using to install would not work once openSUSE Leap 15.2 was installed. I have since ordered some ethernet over powerline adapters to see if that solves my internet woes. The powerline ethernet was the plan all along but I was just wanting to get the system set up at least and I had the wifi usb dongle already so I figured i’d use that till it didn’t work. 

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4862 mintCast 350 – Rocky Road Ahead (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-350-rocky-road-ahead-mp3/ Thu, 17 Dec 2020 05:12:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4820 Then in the news, We have the latest Mint newsletter, Cinnamon 4.8 arrives, Elementary OS goes Pi, and much more  
In security, we shed some light on Oblivious DNS over HTTPS
Download
]]> Download

1:14 HPR Spot
2:13 Show Start
3:18 Wanderings
54:52 News
1:18:33 Security
1:30:54 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Joe preps for 3D work and does some Audio editing, Tony gets older and has a new toy to play with, Bo has been educating himself, Moss destroys his wife’s computer by accident, and Josh was a little late.

Then in the news, We have the latest Mint newsletter, Cinnamon 4.8 arrives, Elementary OS goes Pi, and much more  

In security, we shed some light on Oblivious DNS over HTTPS

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Playing with Arco Linux and a Tiling Window Manager.
    • Owen sent me a Pi 3B. Thanks! 
    • Giving Gitea a try. More in the feedback!
  • Joe
    •  Have not been doing much of my own stuff in the past 2 weeks.
      • Lots of people on vacation at work so I have been putting in a lot of extra hours doing what would normally be their work and my work and trying to lighten the load for my boss.
    • Have sliced several designs to print but have not had a good time to get those printed and ready to go.  Plus I think I still need to tweak some of the settings.  Maybe try a much slower speed with petg or try a different brand.  The brand I am currently using seems like I get about half way through the roll and it becomes progressively harder to get a good print
    • Edited some audio from last year’s HPR new years show for my daughter so that she can remember it forever.  
    • Picked up a PSP Go for a good price that was listed as for parts only.
      • Have to say that I am both happy and disappointed with my purchase
      • Once again got a low cost device and it works perfectly
      • CFW and a selection of games installed but limited by the internal memory of 16gb
      • The device takes a very proprietary memory module (M2) and there is only one prebuilt adapter available for it that is in Japan but is not currently available due to covid.
      • It is possible to directly solder to this device and convert to memory stick duo but I don’t want to hard mod the device and bring the value down succeed or fail the hardware would no longer be original
      • I was hoping that the backlight was out or the screen needed to be replaced so I could work on a new fix.
      • But I have been using it to play Hydro Thunder 
      • Also sold another of the PSP 1001s so I have just about broken even for all the PSPs and the parts I have purchased
    • Was able to get the VPN Docker instance with Transmission to connect to a VPN from internally but I could not get it to work from startup.  Also getting to work from inside would then cause it to close down. So I am still using the VM to do the heavy lifting.
      • But I was able to find a VPN client Docker instance for which I was able to modify the ovpn file from my provider to get it working.  
      • This has allowed me to set up my Docker version of Chrome with the traffic pushed through the VPN container on all my machines
    • Have started biking in the evenings
      • Forgot how much I enjoy biking.  Have been getting a lot of time in and it seems to be helping a bit with the hip arthritis 
      • But I did get pulled over.  
  • Josh
    • Messing around with my new server HP dl380 g5 and laptop Dell XPS P54G.
    • Writing some python.
    • Back on Linux Mint on my main desktop and Dell XPS.
  • Tony Hughes
    • Recorded the latest episode of Distrohoppers Digest with Dale, who at the end we inaugurated as a permanent team member. By the time you listen to the edited show, the episode should be available for download.
    • A week and a half ago I had a camera down my throat to check out why I have been unwell recently and have a diagnosis of a Hiatus Hernia, now I know what the issue is, I can now hopefully mitigate some of the unpleasant symptoms with a few lifestyle changes.
    • And I have just recently celebrated my birthday, although I’m only the second oldest of the mintCast team lol. As a present from my wife I got a new toy to help me do my modeling a little safer, a small pedestal drill. It works great and will reduce the risk of me drilling my fingers as I will be able to use a small vice to hold things I’m drilling and it is far more accurate and so far the results I’m getting are fantastic.  
  • Moss
    • Last night, I thought I would do my wife a favor and remove Ubuntu Unity from her machine; she wasn’t using it and sometimes booted into it accidentally, causing some freaking out. I thought I did everything right, wrote a new boot on the Mint partition, used GPartEd to remove the partition, and expanded the Mint partition to fill the vacated space. About 90 minutes before showtime today, while talking to my mother about her Medicare running out on her rehab care and she would have to pay $300 a day to stay there while her hip continued to heal, my wife informed me she had a Grub Repair screen. I tried a lot of things I have learned over the years, but eventually had to get my Ventoy stick out and boot to Mint. When I still couldn’t get GRUB restored, and with time running out before the show, I took the easy way out and installed Mint again, and was pleased to see that it allowed me to install alongside the original boot so she still has her original installation to run. There is still a lot of work to do to get it back to a single installation which actually boots. That will happen after the show.
    • I just managed to complete another circuit of the Homestar, and am now 68 years old as measured in this backwards system. As celebrations went, this was not one of my finest, nor was the year itself, but I’m happy to have survived this far and thrilled to be on mintCast team.
    • We will have released Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 018 by the time anyone hears this episode. To date, three episodes have reached or exceeded 600 downloads each, which warms my furry little heart, and Episode 017 is over 500 already.
    • I am set up this episode in my second bedroom, with a TV tray and my laptop. If I get any money over the holidays which is not necessary for my continued existence (bills, food), I will add a smallish desk and a mid-sized TV, say 24-26”, and use my mini-desktop; this also means I will have to get the Pi 4 working as my Kodi server for the living room.
    • Dresden-wise, we’re about 75% through Proven Guilty. Dresden and team have just marched into Mab’s broken-looking stronghold.
  • Bo

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • ODOH (Oblivious DNS over HTTPS) * thanks to Londoner
    • FTA: Together, the added encryption and proxying provide the following guarantees:
  • The target sees only the query and the proxy’s IP address.
  • The proxy has no visibility into the DNS messages, with no ability to identify, read, or modify either the query being sent by the client or the answer being returned by the target.
  • Only the intended target can read the content of the query and produce a response.
  • Open Source Devs not concerned about security
  • Trickbot
    • A banking fraud trojan converted to a full malware-as-a-service solution.
    • While UEFI malware is rare because of the difficulty, Trickbot is changing that.
    • This could open the door to OS agnostic UEFI malware that can persist between OS installs and disk swaps.

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4820 mintCast 350 – Rocky Road Ahead https://mintcast.org/mintcast-350-rocky-road-ahead/ Thu, 17 Dec 2020 04:57:24 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4814 Then in the news, We have the latest Mint newsletter, Cinnamon 4.8 arrives, Elementary OS goes Pi, and much more  
In security, we shed some light on Oblivious DNS over HTTPS
Download
]]> Download

1:14 HPR Spot
2:13 Show Start
3:18 Wanderings
54:52 News
1:18:33 Security
1:30:54 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Joe preps for 3D work and does some Audio editing, Tony gets older and has a new toy to play with, Bo has been educating himself, Moss destroys his wife’s computer by accident, and Josh was a little late.

Then in the news, We have the latest Mint newsletter, Cinnamon 4.8 arrives, Elementary OS goes Pi, and much more  

In security, we shed some light on Oblivious DNS over HTTPS

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Playing with Arco Linux and a Tiling Window Manager.
    • Owen sent me a Pi 3B. Thanks! 
    • Giving Gitea a try. More in the feedback!
  • Joe
    •  Have not been doing much of my own stuff in the past 2 weeks.
      • Lots of people on vacation at work so I have been putting in a lot of extra hours doing what would normally be their work and my work and trying to lighten the load for my boss.
    • Have sliced several designs to print but have not had a good time to get those printed and ready to go.  Plus I think I still need to tweak some of the settings.  Maybe try a much slower speed with petg or try a different brand.  The brand I am currently using seems like I get about half way through the roll and it becomes progressively harder to get a good print
    • Edited some audio from last year’s HPR new years show for my daughter so that she can remember it forever.  
    • Picked up a PSP Go for a good price that was listed as for parts only.
      • Have to say that I am both happy and disappointed with my purchase
      • Once again got a low cost device and it works perfectly
      • CFW and a selection of games installed but limited by the internal memory of 16gb
      • The device takes a very proprietary memory module (M2) and there is only one prebuilt adapter available for it that is in Japan but is not currently available due to covid.
      • It is possible to directly solder to this device and convert to memory stick duo but I don’t want to hard mod the device and bring the value down succeed or fail the hardware would no longer be original
      • I was hoping that the backlight was out or the screen needed to be replaced so I could work on a new fix.
      • But I have been using it to play Hydro Thunder 
      • Also sold another of the PSP 1001s so I have just about broken even for all the PSPs and the parts I have purchased
    • Was able to get the VPN Docker instance with Transmission to connect to a VPN from internally but I could not get it to work from startup.  Also getting to work from inside would then cause it to close down. So I am still using the VM to do the heavy lifting.
      • But I was able to find a VPN client Docker instance for which I was able to modify the ovpn file from my provider to get it working.  
      • This has allowed me to set up my Docker version of Chrome with the traffic pushed through the VPN container on all my machines
    • Have started biking in the evenings
      • Forgot how much I enjoy biking.  Have been getting a lot of time in and it seems to be helping a bit with the hip arthritis 
      • But I did get pulled over.  
  • Josh
    • Messing around with my new server HP dl380 g5 and laptop Dell XPS P54G.
    • Writing some python.
    • Back on Linux Mint on my main desktop and Dell XPS.
  • Tony Hughes
    • Recorded the latest episode of Distrohoppers Digest with Dale, who at the end we inaugurated as a permanent team member. By the time you listen to the edited show, the episode should be available for download.
    • A week and a half ago I had a camera down my throat to check out why I have been unwell recently and have a diagnosis of a Hiatus Hernia, now I know what the issue is, I can now hopefully mitigate some of the unpleasant symptoms with a few lifestyle changes.
    • And I have just recently celebrated my birthday, although I’m only the second oldest of the mintCast team lol. As a present from my wife I got a new toy to help me do my modeling a little safer, a small pedestal drill. It works great and will reduce the risk of me drilling my fingers as I will be able to use a small vice to hold things I’m drilling and it is far more accurate and so far the results I’m getting are fantastic.  
  • Moss
    • Last night, I thought I would do my wife a favor and remove Ubuntu Unity from her machine; she wasn’t using it and sometimes booted into it accidentally, causing some freaking out. I thought I did everything right, wrote a new boot on the Mint partition, used GPartEd to remove the partition, and expanded the Mint partition to fill the vacated space. About 90 minutes before showtime today, while talking to my mother about her Medicare running out on her rehab care and she would have to pay $300 a day to stay there while her hip continued to heal, my wife informed me she had a Grub Repair screen. I tried a lot of things I have learned over the years, but eventually had to get my Ventoy stick out and boot to Mint. When I still couldn’t get GRUB restored, and with time running out before the show, I took the easy way out and installed Mint again, and was pleased to see that it allowed me to install alongside the original boot so she still has her original installation to run. There is still a lot of work to do to get it back to a single installation which actually boots. That will happen after the show.
    • I just managed to complete another circuit of the Homestar, and am now 68 years old as measured in this backwards system. As celebrations went, this was not one of my finest, nor was the year itself, but I’m happy to have survived this far and thrilled to be on mintCast team.
    • We will have released Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 018 by the time anyone hears this episode. To date, three episodes have reached or exceeded 600 downloads each, which warms my furry little heart, and Episode 017 is over 500 already.
    • I am set up this episode in my second bedroom, with a TV tray and my laptop. If I get any money over the holidays which is not necessary for my continued existence (bills, food), I will add a smallish desk and a mid-sized TV, say 24-26”, and use my mini-desktop; this also means I will have to get the Pi 4 working as my Kodi server for the living room.
    • Dresden-wise, we’re about 75% through Proven Guilty. Dresden and team have just marched into Mab’s broken-looking stronghold.
  • Bo

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • ODOH (Oblivious DNS over HTTPS) * thanks to Londoner
    • FTA: Together, the added encryption and proxying provide the following guarantees:
  • The target sees only the query and the proxy’s IP address.
  • The proxy has no visibility into the DNS messages, with no ability to identify, read, or modify either the query being sent by the client or the answer being returned by the target.
  • Only the intended target can read the content of the query and produce a response.
  • Open Source Devs not concerned about security
  • Trickbot
    • A banking fraud trojan converted to a full malware-as-a-service solution.
    • While UEFI malware is rare because of the difficulty, Trickbot is changing that.
    • This could open the door to OS agnostic UEFI malware that can persist between OS installs and disk swaps.

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4814 mintCast 349 – NAT Ain’t A Firewall (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-349-nat-aint-a-firewall-mp3/ Wed, 02 Dec 2020 05:19:55 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4794 Then in the news, OpenSUSE’s going public?, Pine64 feels the Plasma, and Linux gets Ray tracing.
In security, kill switches and a reminder that NAT ain’t a firewall.
Download
]]> Download

1:44 Wanderings
42:27 News
50:35 Security
59:43 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo has another helping of Pi, Moss gets spooked, Josh changes up the desktop, and Joe strips.

Then in the news, OpenSUSE’s going public?, Pine64 feels the Plasma, and Linux gets Ray tracing.

In security, kill switches and a reminder that NAT ain’t a firewall.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

Leo

  • Been playing with more Pi!
    • Dug up my old Pi 2, have some download automation running on it now. Made a VM of mine redundant. Considering converting it to a Gitea server to manage my notes.
    • Will relieve my i7 2630qm from Nextcloud duty. The Pi 4 is working beautifully. Now, what to do with it? Docker time?
    • Have some ideas for my old rickety Pi one. Use TMUX to ssh into multiple servers and run bpytop or some monitoring tool on a screen, 24/7. Basically, blinking lights. Raspbian Lite will likely do the job nicely.

Moss

  • I thought I had a problem with the FuzZ400…and before I determined what the problem was, I grabbed my now-repaired mini box and hooked it up. Just as I was tightening the screws on the case, I saw that my tablet, which had been plugged in for charging, was sitting on the keyboard. Problem solved, but too late to go back.
  • I had to reinstall everything on the Mini’s SSD except Mint and Manjaro, probably having to do with having been installed on a completely different computer (Xeon and Nvidia instead of i3 and Intel). 
  • I’ve added more partitions to my Kudu’s 1 Tb SSD. I now have 10 distro partitions, one of them unused. I installed Enso OS, and am probably going to review that for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest. I’m also trying 4M Linux on a USB stick, as it seems to be a Puppy-like version of Arch.
  • I had a lot of other issues, but I’ll save those for the next DHD, which should be out right about the time of the next mintCast.
  • Distrohoppers’ Digest now has 4 episodes with over 500 downloads – 1 of those over 600 –  and only 4 under 400. We’re averaging 463 downloads per episode. Episode 018 featured Dale Miracle live in studio for the first time. Dale covers distros NOT made for beginners, a welcome addition. The next episode is currently scheduled to be recorded on December 9.
  • I’ve been getting a few days’ work as a substitute teacher, but they keep closing the schools. Last week it was that they didn’t have enough healthy bus drivers, next week it’s that they don’t have enough teachers and subs. I got paychecks from Grainger Schools, All Women Housed, and finally from Census2020! I’m still way behind on lots of things, since it has been so long since I last had a paycheck.
  • I’m reading the Kevin Mitnick book. It did not convince me why I need that much security, and completely convinced me that I won’t be secure no matter how much time, effort, and money I spend. So why bother? I’m about to give up and give Google all my money.
  • We are working our way through Proven Guilty, in the Dresden Files series. Almost halfway through.

Josh

  • I have been trying out Plasma and really trying to give it a good shot. I tried openSUSE Tumbleweed first because it has a great plasma representation. It uses the newest plasma available because it’s a rolling release. I personally don’t like anything about default plasma, it just rubs me wrong. I quickly discovered that it just won’t work for me due to look & feel and settings issues. 
  • Next I tried Manjaro Plasma and that felt much better out of the gate. I could live with it as default but some small quarks just keep me at bay. Right clicking on both openSUSE and Manjaro resulted in a menu that I was unfamiliar with. You had to not only right click but then open a menu inside of the dialogue to get the open in terminal option. Also there is no open as root by default but as stated to me by Dale Miracle there is an add-on. The dolphin file browser also does not feel right to me for either of these first two distros I tried. Things get really out of hand when trying to compensate for HiDpi monitors. It’s so hard to get every aspect of the desktop to look right that I just gave up entirely and I tried for hours with both tweaking and resetting but nothing looked good. 
  • Finally I tried FerenOS and, by George, I think he’s done it. Next to Solus (which I will mention later) FerenOS has the best customized plasma desktop hands down. Everything looks proportionate, nothing seems out of place or not scaled right and he fixes the Dolphin issue by ripping it out and replacing it with good old Nemo! Theming is great and you can change everything, the dark or light theme, the accent color, and even the layout of plasma right from the welcome screen. Now that all being said the HiDpi issue of scaling still persists with FerenOS unfortunately. I think that’s just a plasma issue. 
  • So I did try Solus Plasma a while back and I feel that it is the best Plasma Distro but I don’t recommend it anymore because they have fallen behind on the kernel (last I saw it was 5.6). I understand they have an LTS kernel as well but it’s not default and there have been many vulnerability patches applied to the kernel since 5.6. 
  • Even with how good FerenOS is I still went back to Linux Mint with the cinnamon desktop. Cinnamon just looks better to me and is the perfect balance between customizability and functionality. Also when I scale the desktop to anything between 100% and 200% it does not look wrong it scales everything appropriately. An example being when I set it to 125% on my HiDpi dell laptop it scales all aspects of the desktop exactly the same. In plasma unless you know how to edit the panel (which is not obvious) it remains the same size. Only downside to this on Cinnamon is when you set it to 125% 150% or 175% it has screen tearing and I am submitting a bug report for that asap.
  • One last thing I want to mention. I am trying out Manjaro Cinnamon as we speak. It is what I am recording my segment on Mintcast with and it’s given me some options that I would not have known about if I didn’t give it a go. More on this next time.

Joe

  • I have mostly stopped talking about books on here but I read 2 recently that I wanted to mention.  Ready Player 2 and Rhythm of War.  Both really good book and you should check them out as soon as you can
  • Well I decided to put one of the more messed up PSPs in a new cover.  Things did not go in my favor.
    • Was able to get it removed easy enough despite the stripped screws and wrong size screws from the last guy that took it apart.
    • Got it most of the way put back together when the power switch broke (it was loose before I swear)
    • I was able to desolder that power switch and one from a known bad board and move it over but had some trouble with the positioning so had to do it over again a couple of times until I ended up putting it at the far end of where it should sit
    • Also started having problems keeping the ribbon cable for it seated but was finally able to get that into place as well. 
    • Had to take it apart and put it back together in the new case several times due to small errors and needing to get the front of the case seated properly which never really happened
    • Because the one side of the mobo is higher than it should be, the joystick does not work and the volume down is stuck the way it was last time I tried to fix this device with a new front. Was really hoping that it was just the casing that was bent but this turned out to not be the case
    • Being disappointed in how that turned out I decided to pick up another broken psp for 20 dollars. The device supposedly had a broken screen and charging issues and I had an extra screen from this build. Well I got very lucky and the only thing wrong with the device was a bad battery and a broken casing.  One of the previous psps that I had purchased for 20 dollars had come with 2 extra sets of buttons as well as the full housing that I had just tried to use and a brand new piano black faceplate.  I put the faceplate on and put one of the batteries into it and it looks immaculate. I almost want to take it apart and verify that it is the original screen and not an upgraded one because of how good it looks.
    • Now I have a broken battery to work with as well which I will be able to use for a battery mod on a device with a umd drive in the future.  Or if I feel the need to do it for the sake of doing it. 
  • Tried to print some small thin items with PETG and it has not worked very well.  Evidently PETG does not do well in the 1mm range.  Granted it took me several tries with various settings to go and look at what other people had to say on the subject before I came to this conclusion.  So I may try the print in ABS and see how it turns out.  PLA works but is too soft for long term. I however think that ABS will be too brittle.   Maybe I should use carbon fiber or something similar but that would require a lot of refitting of my 3d printer
  • My laptop was overheating while gaming.  It was not doing this before so I don’t know if it was a change from the new update for Borderlands 3 or the laptop itself so I decided to take it apart and clean the fans and replace the thermal paste.  
    • This is not normally an overly difficult fix for my particular laptop, the MSI GE72-6QD 
    • But one of the screws that connect the heatsink to the CPU stripped at the top in a very inconvenient location down next to another heatsink and the arm that holds it all down is very thin.  The  only thing I could do was get out the dremel and the cutting bit and cut a new groove for a straight tip instead of a phillips head screwdriver
    • It worked and I didn’t mess it up.  It was very nerve wracking though cause it would not have taken much of a slip to ruin my laptop
    • Still happy with the results so far

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, November 29, 2020, at 2 pm Central Time, check for your local time!

https://everytimezone.com/s/1506acff

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4794 mintCast 349 – NAT Ain’t A Firewall https://mintcast.org/mintcast-349-nat-aint-a-firewall/ Wed, 02 Dec 2020 05:18:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4788 Then in the news, OpenSUSE’s going public?, Pine64 feels the Plasma, and Linux gets Ray tracing.
In security, kill switches and a reminder that NAT ain’t a firewall.
Download
]]> Download

1:44 Wanderings
42:27 News
50:35 Security
59:43 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo has another helping of Pi, Moss gets spooked, Josh changes up the desktop, and Joe strips.

Then in the news, OpenSUSE’s going public?, Pine64 feels the Plasma, and Linux gets Ray tracing.

In security, kill switches and a reminder that NAT ain’t a firewall.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

Leo

  • Been playing with more Pi!
    • Dug up my old Pi 2, have some download automation running on it now. Made a VM of mine redundant. Considering converting it to a Gitea server to manage my notes.
    • Will relieve my i7 2630qm from Nextcloud duty. The Pi 4 is working beautifully. Now, what to do with it? Docker time?
    • Have some ideas for my old rickety Pi one. Use TMUX to ssh into multiple servers and run bpytop or some monitoring tool on a screen, 24/7. Basically, blinking lights. Raspbian Lite will likely do the job nicely.

Moss

  • I thought I had a problem with the FuzZ400…and before I determined what the problem was, I grabbed my now-repaired mini box and hooked it up. Just as I was tightening the screws on the case, I saw that my tablet, which had been plugged in for charging, was sitting on the keyboard. Problem solved, but too late to go back.
  • I had to reinstall everything on the Mini’s SSD except Mint and Manjaro, probably having to do with having been installed on a completely different computer (Xeon and Nvidia instead of i3 and Intel). 
  • I’ve added more partitions to my Kudu’s 1 Tb SSD. I now have 10 distro partitions, one of them unused. I installed Enso OS, and am probably going to review that for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest. I’m also trying 4M Linux on a USB stick, as it seems to be a Puppy-like version of Arch.
  • I had a lot of other issues, but I’ll save those for the next DHD, which should be out right about the time of the next mintCast.
  • Distrohoppers’ Digest now has 4 episodes with over 500 downloads – 1 of those over 600 –  and only 4 under 400. We’re averaging 463 downloads per episode. Episode 018 featured Dale Miracle live in studio for the first time. Dale covers distros NOT made for beginners, a welcome addition. The next episode is currently scheduled to be recorded on December 9.
  • I’ve been getting a few days’ work as a substitute teacher, but they keep closing the schools. Last week it was that they didn’t have enough healthy bus drivers, next week it’s that they don’t have enough teachers and subs. I got paychecks from Grainger Schools, All Women Housed, and finally from Census2020! I’m still way behind on lots of things, since it has been so long since I last had a paycheck.
  • I’m reading the Kevin Mitnick book. It did not convince me why I need that much security, and completely convinced me that I won’t be secure no matter how much time, effort, and money I spend. So why bother? I’m about to give up and give Google all my money.
  • We are working our way through Proven Guilty, in the Dresden Files series. Almost halfway through.

Josh

  • I have been trying out Plasma and really trying to give it a good shot. I tried openSUSE Tumbleweed first because it has a great plasma representation. It uses the newest plasma available because it’s a rolling release. I personally don’t like anything about default plasma, it just rubs me wrong. I quickly discovered that it just won’t work for me due to look & feel and settings issues. 
  • Next I tried Manjaro Plasma and that felt much better out of the gate. I could live with it as default but some small quarks just keep me at bay. Right clicking on both openSUSE and Manjaro resulted in a menu that I was unfamiliar with. You had to not only right click but then open a menu inside of the dialogue to get the open in terminal option. Also there is no open as root by default but as stated to me by Dale Miracle there is an add-on. The dolphin file browser also does not feel right to me for either of these first two distros I tried. Things get really out of hand when trying to compensate for HiDpi monitors. It’s so hard to get every aspect of the desktop to look right that I just gave up entirely and I tried for hours with both tweaking and resetting but nothing looked good. 
  • Finally I tried FerenOS and, by George, I think he’s done it. Next to Solus (which I will mention later) FerenOS has the best customized plasma desktop hands down. Everything looks proportionate, nothing seems out of place or not scaled right and he fixes the Dolphin issue by ripping it out and replacing it with good old Nemo! Theming is great and you can change everything, the dark or light theme, the accent color, and even the layout of plasma right from the welcome screen. Now that all being said the HiDpi issue of scaling still persists with FerenOS unfortunately. I think that’s just a plasma issue. 
  • So I did try Solus Plasma a while back and I feel that it is the best Plasma Distro but I don’t recommend it anymore because they have fallen behind on the kernel (last I saw it was 5.6). I understand they have an LTS kernel as well but it’s not default and there have been many vulnerability patches applied to the kernel since 5.6. 
  • Even with how good FerenOS is I still went back to Linux Mint with the cinnamon desktop. Cinnamon just looks better to me and is the perfect balance between customizability and functionality. Also when I scale the desktop to anything between 100% and 200% it does not look wrong it scales everything appropriately. An example being when I set it to 125% on my HiDpi dell laptop it scales all aspects of the desktop exactly the same. In plasma unless you know how to edit the panel (which is not obvious) it remains the same size. Only downside to this on Cinnamon is when you set it to 125% 150% or 175% it has screen tearing and I am submitting a bug report for that asap.
  • One last thing I want to mention. I am trying out Manjaro Cinnamon as we speak. It is what I am recording my segment on Mintcast with and it’s given me some options that I would not have known about if I didn’t give it a go. More on this next time.

Joe

  • I have mostly stopped talking about books on here but I read 2 recently that I wanted to mention.  Ready Player 2 and Rhythm of War.  Both really good book and you should check them out as soon as you can
  • Well I decided to put one of the more messed up PSPs in a new cover.  Things did not go in my favor.
    • Was able to get it removed easy enough despite the stripped screws and wrong size screws from the last guy that took it apart.
    • Got it most of the way put back together when the power switch broke (it was loose before I swear)
    • I was able to desolder that power switch and one from a known bad board and move it over but had some trouble with the positioning so had to do it over again a couple of times until I ended up putting it at the far end of where it should sit
    • Also started having problems keeping the ribbon cable for it seated but was finally able to get that into place as well. 
    • Had to take it apart and put it back together in the new case several times due to small errors and needing to get the front of the case seated properly which never really happened
    • Because the one side of the mobo is higher than it should be, the joystick does not work and the volume down is stuck the way it was last time I tried to fix this device with a new front. Was really hoping that it was just the casing that was bent but this turned out to not be the case
    • Being disappointed in how that turned out I decided to pick up another broken psp for 20 dollars. The device supposedly had a broken screen and charging issues and I had an extra screen from this build. Well I got very lucky and the only thing wrong with the device was a bad battery and a broken casing.  One of the previous psps that I had purchased for 20 dollars had come with 2 extra sets of buttons as well as the full housing that I had just tried to use and a brand new piano black faceplate.  I put the faceplate on and put one of the batteries into it and it looks immaculate. I almost want to take it apart and verify that it is the original screen and not an upgraded one because of how good it looks.
    • Now I have a broken battery to work with as well which I will be able to use for a battery mod on a device with a umd drive in the future.  Or if I feel the need to do it for the sake of doing it. 
  • Tried to print some small thin items with PETG and it has not worked very well.  Evidently PETG does not do well in the 1mm range.  Granted it took me several tries with various settings to go and look at what other people had to say on the subject before I came to this conclusion.  So I may try the print in ABS and see how it turns out.  PLA works but is too soft for long term. I however think that ABS will be too brittle.   Maybe I should use carbon fiber or something similar but that would require a lot of refitting of my 3d printer
  • My laptop was overheating while gaming.  It was not doing this before so I don’t know if it was a change from the new update for Borderlands 3 or the laptop itself so I decided to take it apart and clean the fans and replace the thermal paste.  
    • This is not normally an overly difficult fix for my particular laptop, the MSI GE72-6QD 
    • But one of the screws that connect the heatsink to the CPU stripped at the top in a very inconvenient location down next to another heatsink and the arm that holds it all down is very thin.  The  only thing I could do was get out the dremel and the cutting bit and cut a new groove for a straight tip instead of a phillips head screwdriver
    • It worked and I didn’t mess it up.  It was very nerve wracking though cause it would not have taken much of a slip to ruin my laptop
    • Still happy with the results so far

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, November 29, 2020, at 2 pm Central Time, check for your local time!

https://everytimezone.com/s/1506acff

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4788 mintCast 345 – Hawking Chromium (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-345-hawking-chromium-mp3/ Wed, 07 Oct 2020 06:00:53 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4691 Then, our news Linux Mint gets some love, the Gorilla’s in beta and so is Fedora
In Security, we chat with Josh
Download
]]>

Download

1:42 Wanderings
44:23 News
1:07:43 Security
1:17:24 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo’s chromium based pixels do a dance, Tony Hughes plays with chaos, Moss has a Fuzzyputer, Joe has an idea… pad, and Josh butters his machine.

Then, our news Linux Mint gets some love, the Gorilla’s in beta and so is Fedora

In Security, we chat with Josh

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • Chromium graphical glitches
      • Playing with Batocera again
    • Tony H
      • Since the last show I have been playing with the waterslide decal paper again, this time to make decals for coffee mugs, I have done a couple of mintCast Mugs and a Distrohoppers Digest Mug. While after they have been cured in the oven for a little while they are hand washable it is suggested if you want to make them dishwasher proof then you use a special lamination sheet during the process, as I don’t have a dishwasher I’ve not done this and they have stood up to hand washing in warm soapy water so I’m happy. 
      • I have again travelled to Woodbrooke so I am in studio Z on the 15” Dell laptop that stands in as my podcast PC when on the road.
      • I’ve written another couple of articles in my Full Circle series on podcast production.
      • So I was wondering what to review on Distrohoppers for the next show and looking on Distrowatch came across KaOS which is a rolling distribution built on Qt and KDE, and uses the Pacman package system, but is totally independent of any other OS. I’ve had a few issues with Dual Booting but it is on one of my Toshiba Z30’s as a solo install.
      • I made a video tutorial of using Drive to store and share files, for a friend using the OBS screen capture facility. So as well as showing her in person she has the tutorial as an aid memoir if not sure what to do.
    • Moss
      • I received a computer from our team’s audio editor, Fuzzy P. This is an HP Z400 workstation, with a quad-core Xeon processor running at 3.20 GHz, 16 Gb RAM, and my first-ever Nvidia graphics card, an FX-1500. I got some help from Dale Miracle and others in our Telegram group on some issues I ran into. I removed the unnecessary RAID card.  It also has only USB 2 ports but lots of them. I will be purchasing a USB 3 card this week, to be installed in the slot vacated by the RAID card. I briefly ran this machine with my old 2 Tb spinning metal drive, then replaced that with my 512 Gb SSD. It still does not boot all the way through, I need to hit F1 when prompted, but it boots fine after that. I’m using the FuzZ400 for this broadcast and will presumably use it for future podcasts.
      • The FuzZ400 would not see the SSD at first, so I threw GPartEd at it and it got recognized. There are 6 distro partitions on this drive, with one of them unused. It wouldn’t boot to Mint, so I installed a fresh Mint 20 MATE on it, which worked fine, and the Nvidia driver was added during updates. I checked the Ubuntu Unity partition and did not have to reinstall, plus it added the Nvidia driver with ease. Bodhi required a reinstall, but it installed the driver during initial installation. On the other hand, Gecko STATIC found the driver and made it available, but did not give me any hints on how to install it, and ditto for OpenMandriva.
      • The other computer I was given is DOA, but might have some good parts. And I haven’t yet installed the new power supply on my old desktop mini.
      • After Episode 16 of Distrohoppers’ Digest, I removed 3 of the 8 distros on my laptop, and have installed Pop!_OS in one of the freed spaces. I’m still looking for what to add to the other two partitions. Does this mean I’ll be reviewing Pop!_OS for October? Wait and see…
      • Episode 15 of Distrohoppers’ Digest has exceeded 600 downloads, a new peak for us. We’re getting a lot of positive feedback on various groups.
      • I got new tires on my car today. Quite a saga here but no need to go into it. 
      • My mother is back in the rehabilitation facility after breaking the pin in her hip.
      • My wife and I are racing through Dead Beat (Book 7) in Dresden Files. He’s on the clock trying to find out how to invoke the Erlking. So I’ll just invoke Joe right now and let him talk about his two weeks.
    • Joe
      • Catching up on podcasts for a little while
      • Also going to listen to a classic from Raymond Feist 
        • Magician Apprentice and Magician Master
      • Battle Grounds from Jim Butcher the most recent Dresden Files book
        • Did enjoy although I am seeing some continuity issues
      • Alastair Stone novels
        • More urban fiction.  Not terrible.
      • Rebuilding a few parts on my 3D printer, lets see how well it works
        • Had to pull apart the hot end because of a clog between the ptfe tubing and the throat, ordered a new block and throat but got the wrong size so I had to clean up the old one and use it again
        • That seemed to work just fine
        • While I had it out and apart I noticed that the teeth on the extruder gear were a little worn but I decided to try it anyway
        • Also while I had it apart I replaced the hot bed with one that wasn’t warped.  This helped but the Y carriage is also warped so it is not perfect.
        • It seemed like the gear was not providing enough force so I decided to change it and the y carriage at the same time
        • This turned out fine and the calibration worked but it turned out the issue was moisture in the filament which was making it difficult to extrude.
        • So after a couple more teardowns and rebuilds I was still having trouble with extrusion even with a fresh roll so I redid the ptfe tubing again but then the thermistor broke and the one I replaced it with was broke but the third one worked fine.
        • Got a good print in
        • Was not able to get CURA to connect to my 3D printer for whatever reason
        • But I was able to get repetier to connect and send commands.  More testing is required
          • It was able to send commands and read the internal sd card
          • I can still use CURA to slice on my other machines and then send the gcode over to the laptop that I have set up and use either X2Go or Octoprint to handle everything
          • Gives me a reason to setup octopi and see what I can do with it
      • Researching building a full keyboard on my own, not because I think it is a good idea but because I think it would be fun
        • Seems like it would be an expensive hobby to get into.
        • Probably couldn’t turn around and sell them to make my money back and I don’t know if I will be able to do a good job at it
        • I prefer my hobbies pay for themselves
        • Currently looking at building a Sick-68 keyboard which seems to be where most people start the process.
        • I did purchase a 60 percent kit and put in the rest of the blues that I have and a set of keycaps.  I already know that the keyboard will not meet spouse approval as it is very loud.
        • Plus the use of the function key for many things is going to take some getting used to
        • But still it is fun and I like it. But I do think that a full keyboard might do better for me
        • Also the battery on the board seems to not hold a charge for very long and take a lot of time to charge.  I am going to look and see what I have that might make a better replacement
        • But the keys are super smooth and I know that Leo will hate it
      • Picked up an ideapad flex 4 for a decent price. 
        • Not the greatest laptop in the world but I am liking the folding screen and after I switched the hard drive to an SSD and installed LM, it is going pretty smooth.  Although I think I should also upgrade the ram to 8Gb from 4 and that would help a lot 
        • The spinning disk that was in it before I am pretty sure had some issues.  It was running windows but after it ran updates it would have problems rebooting and coming back from suspend.  Although the issue with suspend would be solved by a power cycle.
        • I plan on playing around with this device for now but I think I will reinstall Windows on it and pass it on to one of the kids.  Either my middle child or my youngest depending on need.  
    • Josh Hawk
      • Issues and solutions with btrfs! I set up a 3 way raid 1 on three 2tb disks. I decided to use one of those disks to install lmde4 on and I thought since it’s a 3 way raid 1 it would just have the data on the other 2 disks. I did this, and then the other 2 disks would not mount. I spent hours trying to fix this to no avail. Finally I came across a forum post that mentioned needing to remove a disk from the btrfs raid before using it. At that point I felt so stupid cause the solution was so simple. All I have to do is add the drive back to the raid, do a scrub and balance to get the data correctly on the disk, then delete it from the raid and I can use it as I would any other drive.
  • New hardware!  I just purchased a 1Tb NVME M.2 SSD. It has 3400mb read and 3000mb write (not that I will ever need that speed but I have it!).

THE NEWS:

Clicking the burger menu, “Preferences” -> “Miscellaneous”, and add the following line in “Extra MPV Options”:

hwdec=auto-safe
    • Driver Manager having issues with pulling in recommended packages for Nvidia. To fix this:
      • APT recommends will become enabled in Linux Mint 19.x (they already are in Mint 20)
      • The Driver Manager will switch to packagekit.
      • We’ll soon backport new versions of mintsystem and mintdrivers to all 19.x releases and to Linux Mint 20.
    • A bug, noted here and here, affected people with USB printers when they upgraded from Linux Mint 19.3 to 20.
      • Fix it by removing the ippusbxd package.
      • In the future, the package may be replaced with ipp-usb
    • The clickable area on the close, maximize and minimize buttons will be bigger with no change to the looks.
    • Tray icons (fcitx, KDE connect, Redshift, etc.) got a few tweaks.
    • Acknowledgement of the Cinnamon Spices downtime in early September. Migrated to a new server and framework. Report issues!
  • Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla Beta Is Out
  • Fedora 33 in Beta

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • To Josh: Where do you stand on Security/Privacy vs Convenience > aka tinfoil hat?

Announcements:

Our next show will be on October 18, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC. Check https://everytimezone.com/s/a5d26573  to convert to your local time.

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Londoner for our time zone link
  • Owen Peery for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4691 mintCast 345 – Hawking Chromium https://mintcast.org/mintcast-345-hawking-chromium/ Wed, 07 Oct 2020 05:37:13 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4686 Then, our news Linux Mint gets some love, the Gorilla’s in beta and so is Fedora
In Security, we chat with Josh
Download
]]>

Download

1:42 Wanderings
44:23 News
1:07:43 Security
1:17:24 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo’s chromium based pixels do a dance, Tony Hughes plays with chaos, Moss has a Fuzzyputer, Joe has an idea… pad, and Josh butters his machine.

Then, our news Linux Mint gets some love, the Gorilla’s in beta and so is Fedora

In Security, we chat with Josh

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • Chromium graphical glitches
      • Playing with Batocera again
    • Tony H
      • Since the last show I have been playing with the waterslide decal paper again, this time to make decals for coffee mugs, I have done a couple of mintCast Mugs and a Distrohoppers Digest Mug. While after they have been cured in the oven for a little while they are hand washable it is suggested if you want to make them dishwasher proof then you use a special lamination sheet during the process, as I don’t have a dishwasher I’ve not done this and they have stood up to hand washing in warm soapy water so I’m happy. 
      • I have again travelled to Woodbrooke so I am in studio Z on the 15” Dell laptop that stands in as my podcast PC when on the road.
      • I’ve written another couple of articles in my Full Circle series on podcast production.
      • So I was wondering what to review on Distrohoppers for the next show and looking on Distrowatch came across KaOS which is a rolling distribution built on Qt and KDE, and uses the Pacman package system, but is totally independent of any other OS. I’ve had a few issues with Dual Booting but it is on one of my Toshiba Z30’s as a solo install.
      • I made a video tutorial of using Drive to store and share files, for a friend using the OBS screen capture facility. So as well as showing her in person she has the tutorial as an aid memoir if not sure what to do.
    • Moss
      • I received a computer from our team’s audio editor, Fuzzy P. This is an HP Z400 workstation, with a quad-core Xeon processor running at 3.20 GHz, 16 Gb RAM, and my first-ever Nvidia graphics card, an FX-1500. I got some help from Dale Miracle and others in our Telegram group on some issues I ran into. I removed the unnecessary RAID card.  It also has only USB 2 ports but lots of them. I will be purchasing a USB 3 card this week, to be installed in the slot vacated by the RAID card. I briefly ran this machine with my old 2 Tb spinning metal drive, then replaced that with my 512 Gb SSD. It still does not boot all the way through, I need to hit F1 when prompted, but it boots fine after that. I’m using the FuzZ400 for this broadcast and will presumably use it for future podcasts.
      • The FuzZ400 would not see the SSD at first, so I threw GPartEd at it and it got recognized. There are 6 distro partitions on this drive, with one of them unused. It wouldn’t boot to Mint, so I installed a fresh Mint 20 MATE on it, which worked fine, and the Nvidia driver was added during updates. I checked the Ubuntu Unity partition and did not have to reinstall, plus it added the Nvidia driver with ease. Bodhi required a reinstall, but it installed the driver during initial installation. On the other hand, Gecko STATIC found the driver and made it available, but did not give me any hints on how to install it, and ditto for OpenMandriva.
      • The other computer I was given is DOA, but might have some good parts. And I haven’t yet installed the new power supply on my old desktop mini.
      • After Episode 16 of Distrohoppers’ Digest, I removed 3 of the 8 distros on my laptop, and have installed Pop!_OS in one of the freed spaces. I’m still looking for what to add to the other two partitions. Does this mean I’ll be reviewing Pop!_OS for October? Wait and see…
      • Episode 15 of Distrohoppers’ Digest has exceeded 600 downloads, a new peak for us. We’re getting a lot of positive feedback on various groups.
      • I got new tires on my car today. Quite a saga here but no need to go into it. 
      • My mother is back in the rehabilitation facility after breaking the pin in her hip.
      • My wife and I are racing through Dead Beat (Book 7) in Dresden Files. He’s on the clock trying to find out how to invoke the Erlking. So I’ll just invoke Joe right now and let him talk about his two weeks.
    • Joe
      • Catching up on podcasts for a little while
      • Also going to listen to a classic from Raymond Feist 
        • Magician Apprentice and Magician Master
      • Battle Grounds from Jim Butcher the most recent Dresden Files book
        • Did enjoy although I am seeing some continuity issues
      • Alastair Stone novels
        • More urban fiction.  Not terrible.
      • Rebuilding a few parts on my 3D printer, lets see how well it works
        • Had to pull apart the hot end because of a clog between the ptfe tubing and the throat, ordered a new block and throat but got the wrong size so I had to clean up the old one and use it again
        • That seemed to work just fine
        • While I had it out and apart I noticed that the teeth on the extruder gear were a little worn but I decided to try it anyway
        • Also while I had it apart I replaced the hot bed with one that wasn’t warped.  This helped but the Y carriage is also warped so it is not perfect.
        • It seemed like the gear was not providing enough force so I decided to change it and the y carriage at the same time
        • This turned out fine and the calibration worked but it turned out the issue was moisture in the filament which was making it difficult to extrude.
        • So after a couple more teardowns and rebuilds I was still having trouble with extrusion even with a fresh roll so I redid the ptfe tubing again but then the thermistor broke and the one I replaced it with was broke but the third one worked fine.
        • Got a good print in
        • Was not able to get CURA to connect to my 3D printer for whatever reason
        • But I was able to get repetier to connect and send commands.  More testing is required
          • It was able to send commands and read the internal sd card
          • I can still use CURA to slice on my other machines and then send the gcode over to the laptop that I have set up and use either X2Go or Octoprint to handle everything
          • Gives me a reason to setup octopi and see what I can do with it
      • Researching building a full keyboard on my own, not because I think it is a good idea but because I think it would be fun
        • Seems like it would be an expensive hobby to get into.
        • Probably couldn’t turn around and sell them to make my money back and I don’t know if I will be able to do a good job at it
        • I prefer my hobbies pay for themselves
        • Currently looking at building a Sick-68 keyboard which seems to be where most people start the process.
        • I did purchase a 60 percent kit and put in the rest of the blues that I have and a set of keycaps.  I already know that the keyboard will not meet spouse approval as it is very loud.
        • Plus the use of the function key for many things is going to take some getting used to
        • But still it is fun and I like it. But I do think that a full keyboard might do better for me
        • Also the battery on the board seems to not hold a charge for very long and take a lot of time to charge.  I am going to look and see what I have that might make a better replacement
        • But the keys are super smooth and I know that Leo will hate it
      • Picked up an ideapad flex 4 for a decent price. 
        • Not the greatest laptop in the world but I am liking the folding screen and after I switched the hard drive to an SSD and installed LM, it is going pretty smooth.  Although I think I should also upgrade the ram to 8Gb from 4 and that would help a lot 
        • The spinning disk that was in it before I am pretty sure had some issues.  It was running windows but after it ran updates it would have problems rebooting and coming back from suspend.  Although the issue with suspend would be solved by a power cycle.
        • I plan on playing around with this device for now but I think I will reinstall Windows on it and pass it on to one of the kids.  Either my middle child or my youngest depending on need.  
    • Josh Hawk
      • Issues and solutions with btrfs! I set up a 3 way raid 1 on three 2tb disks. I decided to use one of those disks to install lmde4 on and I thought since it’s a 3 way raid 1 it would just have the data on the other 2 disks. I did this, and then the other 2 disks would not mount. I spent hours trying to fix this to no avail. Finally I came across a forum post that mentioned needing to remove a disk from the btrfs raid before using it. At that point I felt so stupid cause the solution was so simple. All I have to do is add the drive back to the raid, do a scrub and balance to get the data correctly on the disk, then delete it from the raid and I can use it as I would any other drive.
  • New hardware!  I just purchased a 1Tb NVME M.2 SSD. It has 3400mb read and 3000mb write (not that I will ever need that speed but I have it!).

THE NEWS:

Clicking the burger menu, “Preferences” -> “Miscellaneous”, and add the following line in “Extra MPV Options”:

hwdec=auto-safe
    • Driver Manager having issues with pulling in recommended packages for Nvidia. To fix this:
      • APT recommends will become enabled in Linux Mint 19.x (they already are in Mint 20)
      • The Driver Manager will switch to packagekit.
      • We’ll soon backport new versions of mintsystem and mintdrivers to all 19.x releases and to Linux Mint 20.
    • A bug, noted here and here, affected people with USB printers when they upgraded from Linux Mint 19.3 to 20.
      • Fix it by removing the ippusbxd package.
      • In the future, the package may be replaced with ipp-usb
    • The clickable area on the close, maximize and minimize buttons will be bigger with no change to the looks.
    • Tray icons (fcitx, KDE connect, Redshift, etc.) got a few tweaks.
    • Acknowledgement of the Cinnamon Spices downtime in early September. Migrated to a new server and framework. Report issues!
  • Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla Beta Is Out
  • Fedora 33 in Beta

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • To Josh: Where do you stand on Security/Privacy vs Convenience > aka tinfoil hat?

Announcements:

Our next show will be on October 18, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC. Check https://everytimezone.com/s/a5d26573  to convert to your local time.

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible …

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Londoner for our time zone link
  • Owen Peery for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4686 mintCast 340.5 – Will It Blend? https://mintcast.org/mintcast-340-5-will-it-blend/ Wed, 05 Aug 2020 04:33:42 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4554 And finally, the feedback and a few suggestions.
Download
]]>

Download

1:41 Interview with Jason van Gumster
1:01:48 Feedback
1:11:03 Check This Out
1:15:27 Outro

In our Innards section, we become blender experts with Jason van Gumster’s help.

And finally, the feedback and a few suggestions.

LINUX INNARDS

Jason van Gumster

  • Tell us who you are and why we wanted you here.
  • What was your first Linux experience?
  • What was the very first Linux distro you ran?
  • What’s a typical workflow for you entail?
  • Why/Why not Linux Mint?
  • Does Linux do everything you need in a system?
  • Do you do any Linux Gaming?
  • What was your motivation for writing books about Blender?
    • Is it something you just fell into or someone asked you to do?
    • How long had you been a user before writing?
    • Who published it and how did you connect? 
  • Blender is hard (as is most of 3D)… what’s the easiest way to get started with it?
  • Is there any piece of Linux and open source software, other than a browser, you could not live without?
  • Other things that might be fun to talk about:
    • Video editing?
    • Getting more artists/creatives to use Linux
      • https://blenderartists.org/top
    • 3D printing in general
    • Animation… both the production of it and enjoying watching it
    • I will totally nerd off about version control (and why creatives should use it, too… not just programmers) if you’re not careful
      • Preference on version control tools
    • Writing books on and about Linux and OSS

Listener question (Joussef Jouda): My question is: The animation playback in viewport in Blender is slow. What is your workaround to view it in realtime?
Follow up: Have you tried Eevee in Blender?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER

  •  Enrique Pizana
  •  Jack

“VisiData is a free, open-source tool that lets you quickly open, explore, summarize, and analyze datasets in your computer’s terminal. VisiData works with CSV files, Excel spreadsheets, SQL databases, and many other data sources.”

https://www.visidata.org/

and the tutorial is at: https://jsvine.github.io/intro-to-visidata/

A Follow Up by Jack

Leo’s Follow Up

  • Cody

https://git.sr.ht/~_dev_fra/hwrc-proton-launcher/blob/master/hwrc-proton-launcher. 

  • Henrik Hemrin
  • Alexander

Leo’s Response

  • John Wallis 

CHECK THIS OUT

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 9th of August at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible … 

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4554 mintCast 340 – Unit of Measurement (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-340-unit-of-measurement-mp3/ Wed, 29 Jul 2020 04:57:59 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4552 Then, in our news, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix changes course, Android comes to a real phone, Blender needs blenders, and more
In security, we talk Twitter
Download
]]>

Download

1:41 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
53:01 The News
1:13:28 Security
1:20:12 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Jason prints a masterpiece, I get knee deep in Mint, Tony Hughes becomes a journalist, Moss has new toys, Joe springs a leak, and Tony Watts is rockin’ in the free world.

Then, in our news, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix changes course, Android comes to a real phone, Blender needs blenders, and more

In security, we talk Twitter

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Jason
    • Trying a large life-size-ish 3D print of an old sculpt I made
    • Been going a bit analog recently with carving in wood. I was gifted some large chunks of cherry and walnut, so I’ve been trying to do interesting things with those.
    • Related to carving and 3D printing, I designed (in Blender!) and printed a mount for carving wooden and horn rings. Did that a while ago, but some folks were asking for more information about it, so I recorded an episode about that on my own podcast that I relaunched a month or so ago, the Open Source Creative Podcast (not-so-shameless plug). Got the thing posted up on Thingiverse for anyone interested.
    • Got a pretty cool audio interface for recording, but then realized that my trusty Røde Smartlav+ won’t properly connect to it without chaining a series of adapters, which I’d much rather not do.
    • Been digging a bit into various web technology stuff
      • Flask and all kinds of crazy Python stuff for databases. Plus that also means playing with Javascript and learning what a REST API is and how to make one
      • Self-hosted analytics with Goatcounter
      • Self-hosted mailing list with phpList
      • Migrated all of my websites to static sites generated by Hugo
      • Messing with getting SSL to play nice on subdomains with different hosting
  • Leo
    • Video capture card + some Raspberry Pi goodness. Plan on adding a few videos to the Terminal Tricks channel about Raspberry Pi’s. Not sure yet what I want to do, but now I have the things I need to do it! I’m open to suggestions.
    • Really putting LM20 through its paces. After a few hiccups I mentioned on the last show, stable stable stable.
    • Got a dock for my t450s! It’s great, except… Droidcam dies on me if I use the powered USB port on the dock. Have to go straight to the laptop’s powered port. Easy fix.
    • The BDLL I miss is the BDLL where they talk about my real, actual profession…

 

  • Tony H
    • Around the end of last year beginning of this I started to write a series on podcast production in Linux for Full Circle Magazine and Ronnie accepted it, due to publishing timings the first in this series is to be in the next issue of the magazine. I have written the first 3 installments, and in the process of starting to write the 4th part.   
    • I have been doing little group restorations of some of my Matchbox castings and doing 4 or 5 of the same casting at the same time. This week I did 5 Lamborghini Marzal’s and was quite pleased with the results. 
    • Myself and Moss recorded Episode 015 of Distrohoppers Digest and the show went out on Friday. Apologies to Moss as his audio on the edit did not come out the best it could, but I freely admit to not being a professional sound engineer and don’t always get it completely right on the edits.
    • On Friday night I did a fresh install of Mint 20 Mate on the Distrohoppers Laptop with the intention of this being my review for what will be the September show, as I will be away and not have sufficient bandwidth to record and edit while away from ‘Studio’ A here in Blackpool.  
  • Moss
    • I’m probably reviewing Ubuntu Unity for Episode 016 of Distrohoppers’. I have had a brief but fun conversation with its dev, Rudra Saraswat. I also haven’t yet decided what to burn to SD to run my Pi 4 on, and am waiting for Rudra to port UUR to the Pi, which he is working on, but am still considering Ubuntu MATE and Manjaro RPi versions.
    • We recorded Episode 015 of Distrohoppers’ Digest on this past Wednesday and had a grand time doing it. It should be available now. Episode 012 has gone over 400 downloads, our 8th episode to do so. 
    • I sold a laptop to one of our listeners. From the proceeds of that sale, I purchased a few things: A new microphone, which you should be hearing now. New SSDs for my desktop and laptop (1 Tb for the desktop, 512 Gb for the laptop), which are installed and will give me more room to install even more distros! I still had half the money from the sale to put into savings against my unemployment period or continued savings should I get a job soon.
    • Yes, I now have 200 distros on each of my computers. No, it’s not that bad. I have 6 distro partitions on my laptop, 1 of which is unused at present, and 8 on my desktop, 5 of which are unused. I did things the easy way on my desktop, cloning the old drive to the new one and then adding partitions, and the hard way on the laptop, as Clonezilla refused to load on my laptop, completely partitioning the disk using GPartEd and doing 5 installations in one night. Thanks to USB 3.1 and the magic of SSDs, I did all of that in 5.25 hours, bringing each distro to a complete install and upgrade with a few programs removed and a couple things added, about 85% complete. Since then, I have Mint, Bodhi, and Ubuntu Unity Edition up to about 98%, I got my printer installed but I’m still needing to configure some programs and tweak one or two things. OpenMandriva and Gecko are still pretty much in the 85-90% range of completion due to lack of time.
    • I talked with Rudra Saraswat, dev of Ubuntu Unity Edition, UbuntuEd, and a couple other new distros, and found he didn’t really have a good mirror, so I hooked him up with my old friend and listener Firecat, and now he does. Always good to make connections in the community.
    • We actually did get one or two chapters of Dresden files read since last show, which brings us to Joe.
  • Joe
    • New Dresden Files book Peace Talks came out.  I enjoyed it but it felt incomplete and despite the several years since the last book it still felt like the book was very rushed and incomplete
      • This is likely because the book was split into two and the next book will be out in a couple of months
    • Started reading the full Drizzt collection by Salvatore which is 36 books.  I have attempted to read the whole collection before and I usually only make it about half way through.  But with the completion of the most recent series I really want to give it another go.
    • My freezer out in the garage had an issue.  An operator issue.  It was still full of ice which then melted.  
      • Yeah that sucks but what is worse is that the water that leaked out was absorbed by the box next to the fridge which happened to be one of my double boxes of comic books.  
      • About half of the comics in it were ruined despite being bagged
    • My server gave up the ghost finally after years of limping along so I had to build a new one
      • Ryzen 5 3600 
        • Would have preferred the 3600g but that one is not out yet.  
      • B450m matx motherboard
      • Cube case
      • Rx 560 graphics card
        • It will eventually get upgraded
      • They gave me the incorrect power supply at Micro Center so I had to make do with another one.
        • Still need to get this taken back
      • G.SKILL 16GB 2X8GB DDR4 3200 KIT
      • I was however able to use the old operating system setup from the ssd out of the old system
      • After I reinstalled plex all the old library setup was in place and working 
      • Same with Docker, once it was installed my old images showed up and I was able to pick up everything where it was before
      • Some of the Icons images are not as they should be but it is really not an issue for me. After the upgrade from 18 to 19 to 20
      • Resilio Sync however I had to go through and start from scratch
        • Still some small issues with permissions but I am working on it
      • Have started using psensor to keep track of temperatures
    • Purchased a dock for the 7130 to test out some of the functions because I had read that the HDMI and displayport output did not work on Linux.
      • It worked fine right out of the box.  I thought it may have been displaylink which eats a lot of processor in Linux but in checking it is not installed on my tablet
        • For those that don’t know, Displaylink is the USB-to-video output technology that most adapters and docks and port replicators use
        • Very optimized for Windows and while they do make a driver for Linux it has a lot of overhead
      • So this could very easily serve as a convergence device.  I will be working on a setup for it
      • The dock costs a bit more than I would like but I am looking for ways around that as it is the power supply for it that costs the most.
    • Ordered a lot of as-is ThinkPad USB 3.0 docks for 25 dollars
      • Should have been here before this weekend so I would have something to work on but got delayed
      • I would need to buy power supplies for them separately and those would be about 10 dollars apiece but I don’t want to order any until I know how many I will get fixed
      • Should be able to sell for around 40 dollars each.  Which is less than the local area has been selling hubs and docks and port replicators for
    • I have to install Windows on 3 devices in the next couple of weeks
  • Tony W
    • New (to me) guitar amp!  Boss Katana 100W
      • Built-in amp “modeling” + every guitar effect you can think of 
      • Bought used, 100W version with GA-FC footswitch and EV-30 expression pedal included
      • Boss tone studio software makes this really powerful (but unfortunately Windows only) 
    • Reworked hard drives in studio computer
      • One more new 120GB SSD
      • Total of 3 drives (2 X SSD for “filthy dual booting” + 1 spinning for storage)
      • Used Ventoy for the Windows install
      • Played with a few distros via Ventoy startup USB
        • PopOS, manjaro, others
    • Bought a chromebook (Acer CB-431) for my kid’s school, 
    • Would have been a used thinkpad if it was for me, but seems good for use I got it for (Thinkpad T430/T440/T450/X220/X230 all still plentiful at good prices on ebay) 
      • Linux Beta
        • Linux virtual machine within ChromeOS
        • Turn it on in settings, allocate how many GB.  It installs, drops you in terminal (tony76tfg@penguin)
        • It’s Debian 10 Buster underneath
        • VLC was already installed
    • Music gigs 
      • Had a good streak of about 5 gigs over 6 weeks, slowing down a bit now (only one each in Jul/Aug)
    • Lots of grilling and barbecuing!  
      • New grill, char griller Akorn (similar to big green egg, cheaper)

THE NEWS

SECURITY UPDATE

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 9th of August at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible … 

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4552 mintCast 340 – Unit of Measurement https://mintcast.org/mintcast-340-unit-of-measurement/ Wed, 29 Jul 2020 04:41:02 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4547 Then, in our news, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix changes course, Android comes to a real phone, Blender needs blenders, and more
In security, we talk Twitter
Download
]]>

Download

1:41 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
53:01 The News
1:13:28 Security
1:20:12 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Jason prints a masterpiece, I get knee deep in Mint, Tony Hughes becomes a journalist, Moss has new toys, Joe springs a leak, and Tony Watts is rockin’ in the free world.

Then, in our news, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix changes course, Android comes to a real phone, Blender needs blenders, and more

In security, we talk Twitter

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Jason
    • Trying a large life-size-ish 3D print of an old sculpt I made
    • Been going a bit analog recently with carving in wood. I was gifted some large chunks of cherry and walnut, so I’ve been trying to do interesting things with those.
    • Related to carving and 3D printing, I designed (in Blender!) and printed a mount for carving wooden and horn rings. Did that a while ago, but some folks were asking for more information about it, so I recorded an episode about that on my own podcast that I relaunched a month or so ago, the Open Source Creative Podcast (not-so-shameless plug). Got the thing posted up on Thingiverse for anyone interested.
    • Got a pretty cool audio interface for recording, but then realized that my trusty Røde Smartlav+ won’t properly connect to it without chaining a series of adapters, which I’d much rather not do.
    • Been digging a bit into various web technology stuff
      • Flask and all kinds of crazy Python stuff for databases. Plus that also means playing with Javascript and learning what a REST API is and how to make one
      • Self-hosted analytics with Goatcounter
      • Self-hosted mailing list with phpList
      • Migrated all of my websites to static sites generated by Hugo
      • Messing with getting SSL to play nice on subdomains with different hosting
  • Leo
    • Video capture card + some Raspberry Pi goodness. Plan on adding a few videos to the Terminal Tricks channel about Raspberry Pi’s. Not sure yet what I want to do, but now I have the things I need to do it! I’m open to suggestions.
    • Really putting LM20 through its paces. After a few hiccups I mentioned on the last show, stable stable stable.
    • Got a dock for my t450s! It’s great, except… Droidcam dies on me if I use the powered USB port on the dock. Have to go straight to the laptop’s powered port. Easy fix.
    • The BDLL I miss is the BDLL where they talk about my real, actual profession…

 

  • Tony H
    • Around the end of last year beginning of this I started to write a series on podcast production in Linux for Full Circle Magazine and Ronnie accepted it, due to publishing timings the first in this series is to be in the next issue of the magazine. I have written the first 3 installments, and in the process of starting to write the 4th part.   
    • I have been doing little group restorations of some of my Matchbox castings and doing 4 or 5 of the same casting at the same time. This week I did 5 Lamborghini Marzal’s and was quite pleased with the results. 
    • Myself and Moss recorded Episode 015 of Distrohoppers Digest and the show went out on Friday. Apologies to Moss as his audio on the edit did not come out the best it could, but I freely admit to not being a professional sound engineer and don’t always get it completely right on the edits.
    • On Friday night I did a fresh install of Mint 20 Mate on the Distrohoppers Laptop with the intention of this being my review for what will be the September show, as I will be away and not have sufficient bandwidth to record and edit while away from ‘Studio’ A here in Blackpool.  
  • Moss
    • I’m probably reviewing Ubuntu Unity for Episode 016 of Distrohoppers’. I have had a brief but fun conversation with its dev, Rudra Saraswat. I also haven’t yet decided what to burn to SD to run my Pi 4 on, and am waiting for Rudra to port UUR to the Pi, which he is working on, but am still considering Ubuntu MATE and Manjaro RPi versions.
    • We recorded Episode 015 of Distrohoppers’ Digest on this past Wednesday and had a grand time doing it. It should be available now. Episode 012 has gone over 400 downloads, our 8th episode to do so. 
    • I sold a laptop to one of our listeners. From the proceeds of that sale, I purchased a few things: A new microphone, which you should be hearing now. New SSDs for my desktop and laptop (1 Tb for the desktop, 512 Gb for the laptop), which are installed and will give me more room to install even more distros! I still had half the money from the sale to put into savings against my unemployment period or continued savings should I get a job soon.
    • Yes, I now have 200 distros on each of my computers. No, it’s not that bad. I have 6 distro partitions on my laptop, 1 of which is unused at present, and 8 on my desktop, 5 of which are unused. I did things the easy way on my desktop, cloning the old drive to the new one and then adding partitions, and the hard way on the laptop, as Clonezilla refused to load on my laptop, completely partitioning the disk using GPartEd and doing 5 installations in one night. Thanks to USB 3.1 and the magic of SSDs, I did all of that in 5.25 hours, bringing each distro to a complete install and upgrade with a few programs removed and a couple things added, about 85% complete. Since then, I have Mint, Bodhi, and Ubuntu Unity Edition up to about 98%, I got my printer installed but I’m still needing to configure some programs and tweak one or two things. OpenMandriva and Gecko are still pretty much in the 85-90% range of completion due to lack of time.
    • I talked with Rudra Saraswat, dev of Ubuntu Unity Edition, UbuntuEd, and a couple other new distros, and found he didn’t really have a good mirror, so I hooked him up with my old friend and listener Firecat, and now he does. Always good to make connections in the community.
    • We actually did get one or two chapters of Dresden files read since last show, which brings us to Joe.
  • Joe
    • New Dresden Files book Peace Talks came out.  I enjoyed it but it felt incomplete and despite the several years since the last book it still felt like the book was very rushed and incomplete
      • This is likely because the book was split into two and the next book will be out in a couple of months
    • Started reading the full Drizzt collection by Salvatore which is 36 books.  I have attempted to read the whole collection before and I usually only make it about half way through.  But with the completion of the most recent series I really want to give it another go.
    • My freezer out in the garage had an issue.  An operator issue.  It was still full of ice which then melted.  
      • Yeah that sucks but what is worse is that the water that leaked out was absorbed by the box next to the fridge which happened to be one of my double boxes of comic books.  
      • About half of the comics in it were ruined despite being bagged
    • My server gave up the ghost finally after years of limping along so I had to build a new one
      • Ryzen 5 3600 
        • Would have preferred the 3600g but that one is not out yet.  
      • B450m matx motherboard
      • Cube case
      • Rx 560 graphics card
        • It will eventually get upgraded
      • They gave me the incorrect power supply at Micro Center so I had to make do with another one.
        • Still need to get this taken back
      • G.SKILL 16GB 2X8GB DDR4 3200 KIT
      • I was however able to use the old operating system setup from the ssd out of the old system
      • After I reinstalled plex all the old library setup was in place and working 
      • Same with Docker, once it was installed my old images showed up and I was able to pick up everything where it was before
      • Some of the Icons images are not as they should be but it is really not an issue for me. After the upgrade from 18 to 19 to 20
      • Resilio Sync however I had to go through and start from scratch
        • Still some small issues with permissions but I am working on it
      • Have started using psensor to keep track of temperatures
    • Purchased a dock for the 7130 to test out some of the functions because I had read that the HDMI and displayport output did not work on Linux.
      • It worked fine right out of the box.  I thought it may have been displaylink which eats a lot of processor in Linux but in checking it is not installed on my tablet
        • For those that don’t know, Displaylink is the USB-to-video output technology that most adapters and docks and port replicators use
        • Very optimized for Windows and while they do make a driver for Linux it has a lot of overhead
      • So this could very easily serve as a convergence device.  I will be working on a setup for it
      • The dock costs a bit more than I would like but I am looking for ways around that as it is the power supply for it that costs the most.
    • Ordered a lot of as-is ThinkPad USB 3.0 docks for 25 dollars
      • Should have been here before this weekend so I would have something to work on but got delayed
      • I would need to buy power supplies for them separately and those would be about 10 dollars apiece but I don’t want to order any until I know how many I will get fixed
      • Should be able to sell for around 40 dollars each.  Which is less than the local area has been selling hubs and docks and port replicators for
    • I have to install Windows on 3 devices in the next couple of weeks
  • Tony W
    • New (to me) guitar amp!  Boss Katana 100W
      • Built-in amp “modeling” + every guitar effect you can think of 
      • Bought used, 100W version with GA-FC footswitch and EV-30 expression pedal included
      • Boss tone studio software makes this really powerful (but unfortunately Windows only) 
    • Reworked hard drives in studio computer
      • One more new 120GB SSD
      • Total of 3 drives (2 X SSD for “filthy dual booting” + 1 spinning for storage)
      • Used Ventoy for the Windows install
      • Played with a few distros via Ventoy startup USB
        • PopOS, manjaro, others
    • Bought a chromebook (Acer CB-431) for my kid’s school, 
    • Would have been a used thinkpad if it was for me, but seems good for use I got it for (Thinkpad T430/T440/T450/X220/X230 all still plentiful at good prices on ebay) 
      • Linux Beta
        • Linux virtual machine within ChromeOS
        • Turn it on in settings, allocate how many GB.  It installs, drops you in terminal (tony76tfg@penguin)
        • It’s Debian 10 Buster underneath
        • VLC was already installed
    • Music gigs 
      • Had a good streak of about 5 gigs over 6 weeks, slowing down a bit now (only one each in Jul/Aug)
    • Lots of grilling and barbecuing!  
      • New grill, char griller Akorn (similar to big green egg, cheaper)

THE NEWS

SECURITY UPDATE

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 9th of August at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

Before we leave, we want to make sure to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible … 

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4547