Bi-Weekly – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Wed, 24 Feb 2021 06:17:02 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Bi-Weekly – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 164426984 mintCast 355 – Deferred Update (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-355-deferred-update-mp3/ Wed, 24 Feb 2021 06:14:34 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4939 Then, in the News, so much controversy, Linux on Mars, VLC on the moon, Mint and mintCast make the cut, and more
In Security, patch Mint, patch the kernel, patch your browser
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2:09 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
59:34 The News
1:28:22 Security
1:40:00 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Mike shreds a new axe, I’m more and more impressed by Proton, Joe has frozen joints, Moss is going to be rich someday, Tony Hughes gets immunities, and Josh panics with a crowbar. 

Then, in the News, so much controversy, Linux on Mars, VLC on the moon, Mint and mintCast make the cut, and more

In Security, patch Mint, patch the kernel, patch your browser

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Mike
    • Finished reading 2 Mitnick books recently (Ghost in the Wires and The Art of Invisibility)
    • Bought a new guitar (Fender Newporter Special)
  • Leo
    • Path of Exile runs 95% as good as Windows via Proton Experimental
    • Played with Trinity Desktop Environment for a month
  • Joe
    • It has been cold in Texas which tends to slow me down because it hurts.
    • I did get a new 8 Tb hard drive for my server.  Transferred all the data from my 2 Tb onto it but I still need to swap it into the PC instead of the external enclosure.  Then I will be changing the name to match the 2 Tb drive and after I restart it should work fine with my Plex auto detecting.
    • Picked up 5 Raspberry Pi Picos for future projects but I have not found the right project for me yet
      1. Plus as of yet you can use Thonny which gives you an environment for micropython but I am waiting for arduino to get their UI up and running for it which they say they are doing so that I can more easily use c/c++ and more easily convert some of the pro micro code over.
      2. This will make things easier to build a usb controller although I think I will try  a few other projects first
    • I have spent a lot of time cooking and looking up recipes.  Mostly cause if I’m cooking in the kitchen that means that it is warm in the kitchen
      1. Got an air fryer / toaster oven combo that I have been using quite a bit to make healthier fish and chips.  
      2. Also made another batch of protein bars.  This time it was the caramel chocolate version instead of the Skor bar.  It does not firm up as much as I would like in the freezer but is still very tasty and the silicone dish that I used was very helpful as was adding a bit of nonstick to the wax paper.
      3. The burrito skillet was a big hit and I am looking for other recipes to add to my favorites list
    • Work was a little rough here in Texas with the record cold and snowfall
      1. For most places the cold and the snow that we got would not be a problem.  But because this area never gets that we are not prepared for such a thing.  We don’t have snow plows and salt on standby so things got a little crazy here
      2. Millions of people without power for extended periods of time.  Schools closed even though the majority of students are SFH right now anyway.  Road and business closures
      3. I was lucky in that my power was very stable at my house.  Because of this I also ended up working a lot more because most of my team was unavailable.  Lots of 14 hour days and lots of getting called back into work after hours because everyone else had lost connection
      4. While this was going on I also had a water pipe burst due to freezing.  It was fun.  The pipe actually burst in 2 places so the first fix didn’t work.  Thankfully I was able to get a plumber out pretty quick to get the work done.  Which is surprising considering how many people had the same problem including the local post office.
      5. The drain for the washing machine is also frozen so I will not be able to run clothes for a few days and I will need to remember how to do drywall soon after I am satisfied that the wall is dry
    • Been playing a lot of Borderlands 3 to pass the cold Texas days.  I am still liking it.  Also playing some Victor Vran on occasion.  
      1. Someone on Telegram mentioned that a redone version of Diablo 2 is supposed to be coming out.  I have to wonder if it will be playable on linux.  I know that you can easily get the old one to play on linux but Blizzard and Steam don’t have any kind of deal and probably never will.
  • Moss
    • There are updates taking OpenMandriva Lx to version 4.2. If you run them as upgrades and don’t read the blog posts first, you will have issues. I’ll talk more about that in Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 020, which we should be recording this week. I have a clean install on the FuzZ400 but have issues with the upgrade on my Kudu, all reported to the OMA Forum.  Distrohoppers’ Digest will also feature a brand new segment, Beautiful Failures. We will talk about the distros we *almost* got to review and what happened. Our most-downloaded episode, 018, has stalled out just below 700 downloads.
    • Listener Dylan Burger has been added to the growing team at It’s MOSS, and added a new feature: Distro Madness 2021. This features head-to-head choices between distros, with a winner emerging. We haven’t had many visitors to the site on a daily basis, so Dylan came up with this idea. The first round of voting is nearly over, so get your votes in now. We intend to have the voting for each round end on the Friday following each whole-numbered episode of mintCast.
    • I have a new sponsor on Sponsus. Every little bit helps, and I am grateful for the support.
    • My other project, All Women Housed, is taking some big steps forward. We are currently in the “almost” phase: almost on the shelves in two southern California grocery chains and in negotiations with a monster chain in Florida most of you have heard of. We have almost completed negotiations for online sales of produce and other products as well. I should have something to actually announce by next episode, don’t wanna jinx it. 
    • My mother’s estate should be settled in 60 days or less, and that will help a lot. She will finally be laid to rest on Friday, February 26th.
    • My wife wants a new computer and wants to learn computer art. I had my eye on a 12-core HP Z800 Workstation for her, but Leo convinced me the 8-core would be a better deal and it’s cheaper. I’ll get that when I get my income taxes back if it’s still there. 
    • We are now reading Book 10 of Dresden Files, Small Favor.
  • Tony Hughes
    • Same old same old here in the UK, still in Lock Down so not able to go anywhere so our Valentines meal was a delivery chinese. On a good note I had my first Covid Jab yesterday (Saturday 20th Feb) so I’m halfway to being a little safer.  
    • I have been doing lots of walking during lock down to keep fit and for the last week or so I’m starting to get some distance in with 5 miles a day the last 4 days.
    • Nothing much Linux wise although I did install EndeavourOS to one of my laptops, my remaining Toshiba Z30, I’ve just sold the other one with Windows 10 installed, I had been asked to do a dual boot with Mint, but Windows took over the boot process and I could not get it to boot into the boot selector or bios so that was a no go. Although since then, the guys gave me a way to get to the boot menu by crashing windows several times to confuse it, for future reference if it ever happens again.
  • Josh
    • Crowbar Kernel Panic the new official unofficial Linux Mint gaming podcast with hosts Bo and Me (Josh). This mintCast spinoff will dive into the nitty gritty of gaming on Linux. We will test games and launchers to see just how good gaming on Linux has become. 
    • SNOW! No seriously too much snow please stop…
    • Other than snow in my life I have actually switched fully over to Debian as my main server distro of choice. There are a few reasons for this. 
  1. It’s not controlled by one entity.
  2. It’s extremely static.
  3. It’s super flexible with iso’s that even include proprietary firmware.
  4. The installer is BETTER than Ubuntu.
  • I have also set up a Matrix-synapse with Debian on the backend all running on Linode. I cannot say enough good things about Linode, they are great. [Moss: And if you sign up with Linode and use the code “mintcast”, you will get exactly zero added benefits!]
  • My dad finally upgraded his TV woot! He got a 65” LG NANO90 4K TV and it’s so beautiful with some tweaking possibly by the user and possibly by AI. There are some caveats to having a 4K TV that I didn’t even know about till now.
  1. On default settings right out of the box the picture quality on 1080p or lower is really really bad.
  2. Netflix price gouging.
  3. webOS kinda sucks compared to Roku’s UI.
  4. Not all 4k or 1080p content is the same even on HD broadcast TV.
  • Last but not least, I am turning LMDE4 into a rolling release.

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on March 7, 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, 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!>
]]> 4939 mintCast 355 – Deferred Update https://mintcast.org/mintcast-355-deferred-update/ Wed, 24 Feb 2021 06:04:46 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4933 Then, in the News, so much controversy, Linux on Mars, VLC on the moon, Mint and mintCast make the cut, and more
In Security, patch Mint, patch the kernel, patch your browser
Download
]]> Download

2:09 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
59:34 The News
1:28:22 Security
1:40:00 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Mike shreds a new axe, I’m more and more impressed by Proton, Joe has frozen joints, Moss is going to be rich someday, Tony Hughes gets immunities, and Josh panics with a crowbar. 

Then, in the News, so much controversy, Linux on Mars, VLC on the moon, Mint and mintCast make the cut, and more

In Security, patch Mint, patch the kernel, patch your browser

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Mike
    • Finished reading 2 Mitnick books recently (Ghost in the Wires and The Art of Invisibility)
    • Bought a new guitar (Fender Newporter Special)
  • Leo
    • Path of Exile runs 95% as good as Windows via Proton Experimental
    • Played with Trinity Desktop Environment for a month
  • Joe
    • It has been cold in Texas which tends to slow me down because it hurts.
    • I did get a new 8 Tb hard drive for my server.  Transferred all the data from my 2 Tb onto it but I still need to swap it into the PC instead of the external enclosure.  Then I will be changing the name to match the 2 Tb drive and after I restart it should work fine with my Plex auto detecting.
    • Picked up 5 Raspberry Pi Picos for future projects but I have not found the right project for me yet
      1. Plus as of yet you can use Thonny which gives you an environment for micropython but I am waiting for arduino to get their UI up and running for it which they say they are doing so that I can more easily use c/c++ and more easily convert some of the pro micro code over.
      2. This will make things easier to build a usb controller although I think I will try  a few other projects first
    • I have spent a lot of time cooking and looking up recipes.  Mostly cause if I’m cooking in the kitchen that means that it is warm in the kitchen
      1. Got an air fryer / toaster oven combo that I have been using quite a bit to make healthier fish and chips.  
      2. Also made another batch of protein bars.  This time it was the caramel chocolate version instead of the Skor bar.  It does not firm up as much as I would like in the freezer but is still very tasty and the silicone dish that I used was very helpful as was adding a bit of nonstick to the wax paper.
      3. The burrito skillet was a big hit and I am looking for other recipes to add to my favorites list
    • Work was a little rough here in Texas with the record cold and snowfall
      1. For most places the cold and the snow that we got would not be a problem.  But because this area never gets that we are not prepared for such a thing.  We don’t have snow plows and salt on standby so things got a little crazy here
      2. Millions of people without power for extended periods of time.  Schools closed even though the majority of students are SFH right now anyway.  Road and business closures
      3. I was lucky in that my power was very stable at my house.  Because of this I also ended up working a lot more because most of my team was unavailable.  Lots of 14 hour days and lots of getting called back into work after hours because everyone else had lost connection
      4. While this was going on I also had a water pipe burst due to freezing.  It was fun.  The pipe actually burst in 2 places so the first fix didn’t work.  Thankfully I was able to get a plumber out pretty quick to get the work done.  Which is surprising considering how many people had the same problem including the local post office.
      5. The drain for the washing machine is also frozen so I will not be able to run clothes for a few days and I will need to remember how to do drywall soon after I am satisfied that the wall is dry
    • Been playing a lot of Borderlands 3 to pass the cold Texas days.  I am still liking it.  Also playing some Victor Vran on occasion.  
      1. Someone on Telegram mentioned that a redone version of Diablo 2 is supposed to be coming out.  I have to wonder if it will be playable on linux.  I know that you can easily get the old one to play on linux but Blizzard and Steam don’t have any kind of deal and probably never will.
  • Moss
    • There are updates taking OpenMandriva Lx to version 4.2. If you run them as upgrades and don’t read the blog posts first, you will have issues. I’ll talk more about that in Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 020, which we should be recording this week. I have a clean install on the FuzZ400 but have issues with the upgrade on my Kudu, all reported to the OMA Forum.  Distrohoppers’ Digest will also feature a brand new segment, Beautiful Failures. We will talk about the distros we *almost* got to review and what happened. Our most-downloaded episode, 018, has stalled out just below 700 downloads.
    • Listener Dylan Burger has been added to the growing team at It’s MOSS, and added a new feature: Distro Madness 2021. This features head-to-head choices between distros, with a winner emerging. We haven’t had many visitors to the site on a daily basis, so Dylan came up with this idea. The first round of voting is nearly over, so get your votes in now. We intend to have the voting for each round end on the Friday following each whole-numbered episode of mintCast.
    • I have a new sponsor on Sponsus. Every little bit helps, and I am grateful for the support.
    • My other project, All Women Housed, is taking some big steps forward. We are currently in the “almost” phase: almost on the shelves in two southern California grocery chains and in negotiations with a monster chain in Florida most of you have heard of. We have almost completed negotiations for online sales of produce and other products as well. I should have something to actually announce by next episode, don’t wanna jinx it. 
    • My mother’s estate should be settled in 60 days or less, and that will help a lot. She will finally be laid to rest on Friday, February 26th.
    • My wife wants a new computer and wants to learn computer art. I had my eye on a 12-core HP Z800 Workstation for her, but Leo convinced me the 8-core would be a better deal and it’s cheaper. I’ll get that when I get my income taxes back if it’s still there. 
    • We are now reading Book 10 of Dresden Files, Small Favor.
  • Tony Hughes
    • Same old same old here in the UK, still in Lock Down so not able to go anywhere so our Valentines meal was a delivery chinese. On a good note I had my first Covid Jab yesterday (Saturday 20th Feb) so I’m halfway to being a little safer.  
    • I have been doing lots of walking during lock down to keep fit and for the last week or so I’m starting to get some distance in with 5 miles a day the last 4 days.
    • Nothing much Linux wise although I did install EndeavourOS to one of my laptops, my remaining Toshiba Z30, I’ve just sold the other one with Windows 10 installed, I had been asked to do a dual boot with Mint, but Windows took over the boot process and I could not get it to boot into the boot selector or bios so that was a no go. Although since then, the guys gave me a way to get to the boot menu by crashing windows several times to confuse it, for future reference if it ever happens again.
  • Josh
    • Crowbar Kernel Panic the new official unofficial Linux Mint gaming podcast with hosts Bo and Me (Josh). This mintCast spinoff will dive into the nitty gritty of gaming on Linux. We will test games and launchers to see just how good gaming on Linux has become. 
    • SNOW! No seriously too much snow please stop…
    • Other than snow in my life I have actually switched fully over to Debian as my main server distro of choice. There are a few reasons for this. 
  1. It’s not controlled by one entity.
  2. It’s extremely static.
  3. It’s super flexible with iso’s that even include proprietary firmware.
  4. The installer is BETTER than Ubuntu.
  • I have also set up a Matrix-synapse with Debian on the backend all running on Linode. I cannot say enough good things about Linode, they are great. [Moss: And if you sign up with Linode and use the code “mintcast”, you will get exactly zero added benefits!]
  • My dad finally upgraded his TV woot! He got a 65” LG NANO90 4K TV and it’s so beautiful with some tweaking possibly by the user and possibly by AI. There are some caveats to having a 4K TV that I didn’t even know about till now.
  1. On default settings right out of the box the picture quality on 1080p or lower is really really bad.
  2. Netflix price gouging.
  3. webOS kinda sucks compared to Roku’s UI.
  4. Not all 4k or 1080p content is the same even on HD broadcast TV.
  • Last but not least, I am turning LMDE4 into a rolling release.

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on March 7, 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, 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!>
]]> 4933 mintCast 353 – Brave New WWW (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-353-brave-new-www-mp3/ Wed, 27 Jan 2021 05:46:48 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4892 Then, our news we talk RPi Pico, Ubuntu’s Booting on an Apple M1, Flatpak is faster, Project Linux turns into Alma Linux, and more
In security, the InterPlanetary File System
Download
]]> Download

1:58 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:01:23 The News
1:29:47 Security Update
1:38:43 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I have second thoughts about Kubuntu, Moss has a new toy, Joe has been playing with watches, Tony has been editing audio, Josh hasn’t broken Arch, Bo survived the pandemic!

Then, our news we talk RPi Pico, Ubuntu’s Booting on an Apple M1, Flatpak is faster, Project Linux turns into Alma Linux, and more

In security, the InterPlanetary File System

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • Having second thoughts about Kubuntu 20.10
    • Doubling down on Brave browser.
      • Found out it is the first to support IPFS
      • Looking at becoming a Brave Creator. This allows me to generate tips in the BAT currency from Brave users.
    • Took a leap of faith and installed the Flatpak PPA to get the latest flatpak so I could test out Chromium which requires 1.8.5 or above. Everything seems to be working. A little apprehensive because mumble is flatpak, and it’s what I use for the YouTube stream audio.
  • Joe
    • Ordered some new parts for the Samsung Galaxy S3 Watch so that I could fix the small issues with it because I saw a really good price for a set of parts that would do the job.
      • It works well and the rest of the parts make for almost a whole watch.  I may purchase another battery and put it all together to have another mostly working watch.
      • This new motherboard is actually a cellular version but because of the limitations of the eSIM that is included on the board I cannot get it to work with TMobile.  This is not a big deal for me because I would not use it as a phone anyway it was just something cool to contemplate
    • Also purchased some more neckband headphones to work on since I have not done so in a while. I know that I have 19 or so working headphones but I found some that have active noise cancelling that are not in the LG line that I would like to work on and see if I can do some of the same fixes to that I normally do with the LG’s. So it is the Anker Soundcores that I will be working on and adding the MMCX connections to.  They are also supposed to have a better battery life but it looks like they will be a lot more of a pain to take apart and put back together since I think that it is all glued.  So keeping the parts in usable physical condition may be difficult.  I may also have to look into replacement batteries as I do not know what is wrong with them.
      • The 5 headphones arrived and I have started working on them.  2 of the headsets have bad batteries.  So with the Anker phones that had the bad battery I started taking that apart first as I knew that there would be a learning curve in figuring out how to take the device apart
      • I did get it apart and figure out the best way to do it with minimal breakage but let’s just say that I don’t recommend it for modding purposes or repairability
    • Had some fun with the rename utility.  Bulk renaming of files was super easy and saved me a lot of time.  Wouldn’t mind doing a show on that and SED. 
      • rename ‘s/old-name/new-name/g’ files
      • But i have been told that it is way too nerdy
    • Picked up a fridge for free.  My wife found it on FB and it is a very nice fridge.  Granted it did cost me some money to rent the truck to move it but it was still a lot less than a new fridge (which I was planning on buying my wife this year)  The people that had it were moving and needed it gone as soon as possible.  It is probably the nicest side by side that I have ever owned. I can’t complain, it works and it looks awesome.
      • The only thing is, I was the only person moving the thing and I am super lucky that I did not hurt myself.  The thing was heavy.
    • Because of changes in my insurance, the copay for prescriptions has gone up a lot.  To the point that I don’t know how much money I am going to be able to put towards projects this year.  All this means is that I will be forced to go through my backlog of old projects or almost-projects and get it all up to date.  Maybe do a little bit with software again.
    • My Eldest Child turned 18 this week.  That is weird.  
    • On my VM download server I was still having problems with transmission-rss so I attempted to downgrade the Ruby version so that it would work properly again.  This did not work well.  I made several attempts to downgrade and all failed miserably.
      • Then I realized that the reason I was using transmission-rss initially was because that was available in a docker
      • So I shut down the transmission setup and moved everything over to qbittorrent which allowed me to re-setup all my former automation so that the files automatically go where I want them.  I do like the UI for qbittorrent and it is working well.
      • The rules that you can set up for automatic downloads and for after download moves was perfect for how I had things set up before.
  • Moss
    • Joshua Hawk sent me a laptop, a Dell Inspiron 7353 2-in-1 with touchscreen. He had installed Fedora on it, which I soon destroyed, and I’ve run a carousel of distros on it, to Pop!_OS, Bodhi 5.1, back to Fedora, and back to Bodhi. There are interesting touchpad issues: in Fedora, the touchpad right-click sends a left-click (it works fine Bodhi), and in Bodhi it does not load the screen keyboard. This is a great addition to my collection, and as it only has a 128 Gb SSD and a lot of screws keeping me from being brave enough to replace the SSD, this will be my machine to test distros for Distrohoppers’ Digest for the foreseeable future.
    • Speaking of Distrohoppers’ Digest, Episode 19 is out. Episodes 15 through 18 are also in the top 5 of our download numbers. For Episode 19 we actually have Dale in the header and footer readings. We had a great time, I get the idea we could banter a bit more but we’re still getting our team-feet under.
    • My Sponsus account now has 3 monthly sponsors and has also taken in a nice donation. You can hear them named at the end of the current episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest.
    • My recording and work space is in flux right now. There really was a short on the sound card in the Mini, and contacting that is what blew the power supply a few months ago. It’s not catastrophic but not something I want to have on a system I’m doing sound recording on, and I’ll be moving that along to someone who needs it. Dale has sent me an AMD sound card, which will replace the FX 1800 Nvidia card in the FuzZ400, which will take over as my main machine. Right now I’m recording on my Kudu laptop, still the most powerful machine I have. 
    • School is in and out, depending on the week and the school. I worked 4 days in the last two weeks and got paid for a 5th when they forgot to cancel an assignment.
    • My other business is poised to take off, and we plan to sell a lot of common products and donate 80% of our profits to projects providing housing funds and services to homeless people in America.  I’ll post the link when we are actually doing business.
    • My teeth are not working yet, and I have an appointment for a refitting this week.
    • We are more than halfway through White Night, the 9th book in the Dresden Files series. 
    • I have also been reading Grail and Cosmos: Arthurian Explorations by Alby Stone. Portions of this book were previously published by my friend Bob Trubshaw of Heart of Albion Press. Everything Bob publishes is worth reading if you’re interested in the roots of folklore, and much of it is available as free downloads from his website.
    • My mother has passed, of covid pneumonia which she caught in the rehab facility. She was 91. I miss her. When I come home after having something happen at work I want to talk to her about, I reach for the phone… and remember I can’t call.
  • Tony H
    • So as Moss has said, this week we recorded the latest Distrohoppers Digest which I published on Saturday 23rd after doing the edit, including our new intro with Dale as part of the team. Great show if I do say so myself although we continue to strive to get better. 
    • Mint 20.1 is firmly established on my Laptop although I continue with 19.3 as my main driver on the i7 HP Tower which is my main production PC, at some stage I will get around to upgrading although at the moment as I have the IcyDock on this PC I can boot into a Mint 20 install whenever I want to.
    • I have bought some small storage racks with 32 boxes for putting in spares and components for the diecast models I restore, and I have been busy filling them up and labeling them. With the result my workshop is tidier, I can actually find things.
    • On the home front the Covid situation continues to get worse and by the time you hear this we will have passed 100K deaths for C19 here in the UK. It may mean we have even stricter restrictions before this is all over, The Netherlands have just introduced a curfew from 21.00 to 04.30 to try and stop some of the abuses of the current regulations restricting large gatherings indoors. 
  • Josh
    • Arch is still working. Now it’s not. I tried to install Linux Mint as a dual boot with arch and quickly found out that was a mistake. I first noticed a problem when I did not see arch as a boot option after hitting f12. When Mint’s grub booted arch was there as an option but when clicking it nothing happens just a black screen forever. I rebooted and then booted into mint and that worked fine. I checked my install of arch and everything looked to be in place; it just won’t boot. Anyways long story short I wiped mint and installed openSUSE tumbleweed cause I wanted to and I am just waiting for a good chunk of time again to try and fix or possibly reinstall my arch install.m
    • Been playing a lot of games while I can before school starts next week and I won’t have much time for them. I won’t go into detail but finally after 7 years I finally got around to beating Dragon Age Inquisition. It was a great story line and I can’t wait for the next chapter in that saga. I have also been playing Kingdom Come Deliverance as well and I have mentioned it before it’s one of my favorite RPG’s and I cannot recommend it enough.
    • Also getting ready for school which starts this week. I am taking a networking class. It’s technically the continuation of another networking class I took 3 semesters ago or so I am hoping it all comes back to me. 
    • I got a new mouse! I had my RedDragon M901 for over 5 years now and I loved that thing but the left mouse click was starting to get a little wonky. I tried to get another RedDragon mouse, the M913 but when I received it the left click was sticking to the point you couldn’t tell when you clicked. I returned that and decided to splurge a little and after a lot more research settled on the Corsair Scimitar Elite. All of the mice I have been talking about have had 12 side buttons but the Scimitar was the first I could set macros on and boy has it changed my gaming experience. Unfortunately there is no way to set the macros and all without windows but there are 3 profiles that save right to the mouse itself so once set you can change between them no matter what OS you’re running.

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • IPFS (Interplanetary File System)
    • Originally created back in 2015
    • The purpose is, like Bittorrent, to make file storage distributed to increase the resilience of the web by allowing people that opt into IPFS to store little bits of data they’ve seen to then share it to someone else geographically close to them to make it so that even if the main website goes down, the content can still be accessed.
    • To become one of the IPFS content sharers, enable the Local Node option
    • To simply make use of IPFS, just enable IPFS and ensure you’re using a third-party gateway.
    • The way I see it, Google’s AMP is the main competitor.
  • Brave is the first browser to support it
    • It’s as simple as turning a toggle on in Settings.
    • You can easily choose to be a node the first time you access IPFS content. It’s a simple yes or no.
      • Brave asks if you want to enable the IPFS local daemon.

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!>
]]> 4892 mintCast 353 – Brave New WWW https://mintcast.org/mintcast-353-brave-new-www/ Wed, 27 Jan 2021 05:36:39 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4885 Then, our news we talk RPi Pico, Ubuntu’s Booting on an Apple M1, Flatpak is faster, Project Linux turns into Alma Linux, and more
In security, the InterPlanetary File System
Download
]]> Download

1:58 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:01:23 The News
1:29:47 Security Update
1:38:43 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I have second thoughts about Kubuntu, Moss has a new toy, Joe has been playing with watches, Tony has been editing audio, Josh hasn’t broken Arch, Bo survived the pandemic!

Then, our news we talk RPi Pico, Ubuntu’s Booting on an Apple M1, Flatpak is faster, Project Linux turns into Alma Linux, and more

In security, the InterPlanetary File System

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • Having second thoughts about Kubuntu 20.10
    • Doubling down on Brave browser.
      • Found out it is the first to support IPFS
      • Looking at becoming a Brave Creator. This allows me to generate tips in the BAT currency from Brave users.
    • Took a leap of faith and installed the Flatpak PPA to get the latest flatpak so I could test out Chromium which requires 1.8.5 or above. Everything seems to be working. A little apprehensive because mumble is flatpak, and it’s what I use for the YouTube stream audio.
  • Joe
    • Ordered some new parts for the Samsung Galaxy S3 Watch so that I could fix the small issues with it because I saw a really good price for a set of parts that would do the job.
      • It works well and the rest of the parts make for almost a whole watch.  I may purchase another battery and put it all together to have another mostly working watch.
      • This new motherboard is actually a cellular version but because of the limitations of the eSIM that is included on the board I cannot get it to work with TMobile.  This is not a big deal for me because I would not use it as a phone anyway it was just something cool to contemplate
    • Also purchased some more neckband headphones to work on since I have not done so in a while. I know that I have 19 or so working headphones but I found some that have active noise cancelling that are not in the LG line that I would like to work on and see if I can do some of the same fixes to that I normally do with the LG’s. So it is the Anker Soundcores that I will be working on and adding the MMCX connections to.  They are also supposed to have a better battery life but it looks like they will be a lot more of a pain to take apart and put back together since I think that it is all glued.  So keeping the parts in usable physical condition may be difficult.  I may also have to look into replacement batteries as I do not know what is wrong with them.
      • The 5 headphones arrived and I have started working on them.  2 of the headsets have bad batteries.  So with the Anker phones that had the bad battery I started taking that apart first as I knew that there would be a learning curve in figuring out how to take the device apart
      • I did get it apart and figure out the best way to do it with minimal breakage but let’s just say that I don’t recommend it for modding purposes or repairability
    • Had some fun with the rename utility.  Bulk renaming of files was super easy and saved me a lot of time.  Wouldn’t mind doing a show on that and SED. 
      • rename ‘s/old-name/new-name/g’ files
      • But i have been told that it is way too nerdy
    • Picked up a fridge for free.  My wife found it on FB and it is a very nice fridge.  Granted it did cost me some money to rent the truck to move it but it was still a lot less than a new fridge (which I was planning on buying my wife this year)  The people that had it were moving and needed it gone as soon as possible.  It is probably the nicest side by side that I have ever owned. I can’t complain, it works and it looks awesome.
      • The only thing is, I was the only person moving the thing and I am super lucky that I did not hurt myself.  The thing was heavy.
    • Because of changes in my insurance, the copay for prescriptions has gone up a lot.  To the point that I don’t know how much money I am going to be able to put towards projects this year.  All this means is that I will be forced to go through my backlog of old projects or almost-projects and get it all up to date.  Maybe do a little bit with software again.
    • My Eldest Child turned 18 this week.  That is weird.  
    • On my VM download server I was still having problems with transmission-rss so I attempted to downgrade the Ruby version so that it would work properly again.  This did not work well.  I made several attempts to downgrade and all failed miserably.
      • Then I realized that the reason I was using transmission-rss initially was because that was available in a docker
      • So I shut down the transmission setup and moved everything over to qbittorrent which allowed me to re-setup all my former automation so that the files automatically go where I want them.  I do like the UI for qbittorrent and it is working well.
      • The rules that you can set up for automatic downloads and for after download moves was perfect for how I had things set up before.
  • Moss
    • Joshua Hawk sent me a laptop, a Dell Inspiron 7353 2-in-1 with touchscreen. He had installed Fedora on it, which I soon destroyed, and I’ve run a carousel of distros on it, to Pop!_OS, Bodhi 5.1, back to Fedora, and back to Bodhi. There are interesting touchpad issues: in Fedora, the touchpad right-click sends a left-click (it works fine Bodhi), and in Bodhi it does not load the screen keyboard. This is a great addition to my collection, and as it only has a 128 Gb SSD and a lot of screws keeping me from being brave enough to replace the SSD, this will be my machine to test distros for Distrohoppers’ Digest for the foreseeable future.
    • Speaking of Distrohoppers’ Digest, Episode 19 is out. Episodes 15 through 18 are also in the top 5 of our download numbers. For Episode 19 we actually have Dale in the header and footer readings. We had a great time, I get the idea we could banter a bit more but we’re still getting our team-feet under.
    • My Sponsus account now has 3 monthly sponsors and has also taken in a nice donation. You can hear them named at the end of the current episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest.
    • My recording and work space is in flux right now. There really was a short on the sound card in the Mini, and contacting that is what blew the power supply a few months ago. It’s not catastrophic but not something I want to have on a system I’m doing sound recording on, and I’ll be moving that along to someone who needs it. Dale has sent me an AMD sound card, which will replace the FX 1800 Nvidia card in the FuzZ400, which will take over as my main machine. Right now I’m recording on my Kudu laptop, still the most powerful machine I have. 
    • School is in and out, depending on the week and the school. I worked 4 days in the last two weeks and got paid for a 5th when they forgot to cancel an assignment.
    • My other business is poised to take off, and we plan to sell a lot of common products and donate 80% of our profits to projects providing housing funds and services to homeless people in America.  I’ll post the link when we are actually doing business.
    • My teeth are not working yet, and I have an appointment for a refitting this week.
    • We are more than halfway through White Night, the 9th book in the Dresden Files series. 
    • I have also been reading Grail and Cosmos: Arthurian Explorations by Alby Stone. Portions of this book were previously published by my friend Bob Trubshaw of Heart of Albion Press. Everything Bob publishes is worth reading if you’re interested in the roots of folklore, and much of it is available as free downloads from his website.
    • My mother has passed, of covid pneumonia which she caught in the rehab facility. She was 91. I miss her. When I come home after having something happen at work I want to talk to her about, I reach for the phone… and remember I can’t call.
  • Tony H
    • So as Moss has said, this week we recorded the latest Distrohoppers Digest which I published on Saturday 23rd after doing the edit, including our new intro with Dale as part of the team. Great show if I do say so myself although we continue to strive to get better. 
    • Mint 20.1 is firmly established on my Laptop although I continue with 19.3 as my main driver on the i7 HP Tower which is my main production PC, at some stage I will get around to upgrading although at the moment as I have the IcyDock on this PC I can boot into a Mint 20 install whenever I want to.
    • I have bought some small storage racks with 32 boxes for putting in spares and components for the diecast models I restore, and I have been busy filling them up and labeling them. With the result my workshop is tidier, I can actually find things.
    • On the home front the Covid situation continues to get worse and by the time you hear this we will have passed 100K deaths for C19 here in the UK. It may mean we have even stricter restrictions before this is all over, The Netherlands have just introduced a curfew from 21.00 to 04.30 to try and stop some of the abuses of the current regulations restricting large gatherings indoors. 
  • Josh
    • Arch is still working. Now it’s not. I tried to install Linux Mint as a dual boot with arch and quickly found out that was a mistake. I first noticed a problem when I did not see arch as a boot option after hitting f12. When Mint’s grub booted arch was there as an option but when clicking it nothing happens just a black screen forever. I rebooted and then booted into mint and that worked fine. I checked my install of arch and everything looked to be in place; it just won’t boot. Anyways long story short I wiped mint and installed openSUSE tumbleweed cause I wanted to and I am just waiting for a good chunk of time again to try and fix or possibly reinstall my arch install.m
    • Been playing a lot of games while I can before school starts next week and I won’t have much time for them. I won’t go into detail but finally after 7 years I finally got around to beating Dragon Age Inquisition. It was a great story line and I can’t wait for the next chapter in that saga. I have also been playing Kingdom Come Deliverance as well and I have mentioned it before it’s one of my favorite RPG’s and I cannot recommend it enough.
    • Also getting ready for school which starts this week. I am taking a networking class. It’s technically the continuation of another networking class I took 3 semesters ago or so I am hoping it all comes back to me. 
    • I got a new mouse! I had my RedDragon M901 for over 5 years now and I loved that thing but the left mouse click was starting to get a little wonky. I tried to get another RedDragon mouse, the M913 but when I received it the left click was sticking to the point you couldn’t tell when you clicked. I returned that and decided to splurge a little and after a lot more research settled on the Corsair Scimitar Elite. All of the mice I have been talking about have had 12 side buttons but the Scimitar was the first I could set macros on and boy has it changed my gaming experience. Unfortunately there is no way to set the macros and all without windows but there are 3 profiles that save right to the mouse itself so once set you can change between them no matter what OS you’re running.

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • IPFS (Interplanetary File System)
    • Originally created back in 2015
    • The purpose is, like Bittorrent, to make file storage distributed to increase the resilience of the web by allowing people that opt into IPFS to store little bits of data they’ve seen to then share it to someone else geographically close to them to make it so that even if the main website goes down, the content can still be accessed.
    • To become one of the IPFS content sharers, enable the Local Node option
    • To simply make use of IPFS, just enable IPFS and ensure you’re using a third-party gateway.
    • The way I see it, Google’s AMP is the main competitor.
  • Brave is the first browser to support it
    • It’s as simple as turning a toggle on in Settings.
    • You can easily choose to be a node the first time you access IPFS content. It’s a simple yes or no.
      • Brave asks if you want to enable the IPFS local daemon.

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!>
]]> 4885 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 333 – Half of the Beast https://mintcast.org/mintcast-333-half-of-the-beast/ Wed, 22 Apr 2020 06:52:32 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4361 Then, in the news, Firefox 75 sees daylight, Mozilla and Red Hat get new CEOs, Gnome Challenges the community and more.
In security, Git gets tricked.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, I fiddle with audio equipment, Tony Hughes reinstalls Mint, Moss fights with a giant pickup truck, Tony Watts streams live-ish, Bo makes sense of OPNsense, and Joe blends with Blender.

Then, in the news, Firefox 75 sees daylight, Mozilla and Red Hat get new CEOs, Gnome Challenges the community and more.

In security, Git gets tricked.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

  • Leo
    • Still playing with mics and their configuration. Especially in Linux. I may have no choice but to learn to live with Jack.
    • Have two setups now: The Behringer UM2 with the Behringer XM8500 as mentioned last show and a Focusrite Scarlett Solo with the Rode Podmic. Both XLR based setups.
    • The UM2 connected to either mic is fantastic. Very little noise compared to the MXL990 I had before.
    • The Scarlett Solo is where the issues start. The quality is awesome, but it seems Linux, or rather PulseAudio tends to trip all over itself when in use. Seems when one application is running sound, things are flawless. The moment another device tries to take priority of the mic or playback things can get unpredictable. These issues seem to only crop up when I’m using the input and output of the Scarlett Solo at the same time.
  • Tony H 
    • So I finally got around to fitting the Icy Dock 2.5” x 4 Bay drive port into my tower PC this week. I have been having some issues with my Tower and decided to get a 1TB SSD to reinstall Mint 19.3 Mate as the main drive then use the Dock for Dual booting other Linux Distros. As the Dock has 4 bays and my motherboard only has 4 SATA connections the 5.5” DVD drive has been removed and all the discs including the 1TB are now hot swappable without needing to access inside the PC case. At the moment I have 2 128Gb SSD’s with Ubuntu Mate 20.04 Beta and Q4OS in 2 of the remaining 3 bays and all these could be installed with more than one OS, so lots of scope for hardware testing different Linux and BSD Distributions as I move forward. 
    • Time will tell if the reinstall has cured the issues I have been having with the PC and in the last few weeks particularly with Mumble constantly crashing, we shall see how things go this evening during the recording.
    • I continue to play with my matchbox models and this week have been restoring/customising some mark 10 Jags, a few Lamborghini Mazal’s and a couple of Ferraris, I also took delivery of a few display worthy models and a few for further restoration projects down the line.
    • I took part in the BDLL Euro edition last week and was able to go to bed at a sensible hour as it is between 8pm and 10pm on the Saturday evening my time, the same as the mintCast recording time, which is far more sociable for me, and you guys in the US get the opportunity to be part of 2 shows on one day. This morning it was 1am-3am my time so if I am a bit jet lagged you know why. 
    • My New headset arrived as I had damaged the 3.5mm jack on one of my others but this was not an expensive buy and I’ve still to get the mic to work acceptably for Zoom use so continue to just use it for listening to the audio and use my laptop’s microphone for audio in, it is actually surprisingly good if there is no background noise.
    • And finally myself and Moss recorded our 12th episode of Distrohoppers Digest despite my issues with Mumble we got through it, marking a year since we started. So it is onward into year 2, we may have a guest host for our next episode if we can find a mutually agreeable time to record, otherwise we may have our first Distrohoppers listener edition :-).        
  • Moss
    • We had another wonderful episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest, our twelfth episode and the conclusion of our first year. I even had a tad bit of extra experience: Tony’s machine was dropping Mumble from time to time, so I set up and saved the Mumble Recording for the first time ever.
    • I tried setting up Solus once more. It absolutely refuses to use an existing partition for me. The installer looks just like Ubiquity, but there is no way to select *and change* a partition. I did try installing it as a sole distro and it worked just fine — which means it blew away three perfectly good distros doing so. I don’t think I’m going to be reviewing Solus again unless and until they change/fix that.
    • It looks as if I’m going to be reviewing Ubuntu Mate 20.04 for the next episode of DHD. I’ve also loaded Ubuntu Studio 20.04 Beta, but I’m not happy with it yet and XFCE is not my friend.
    • Thanks to Joe, I have a new Bluetooth headset, an LG HBS770. It works really great in all respects, except I couldn’t get it to connect to this computer before the show, which is probably my fault for deleting more Bluetooth from the machine than I could find to reinstall.
    • This past Wednesday, while driving for work, I got in a REALLY BAD auto accident, resulting in me having to be taken by ambulance to the emergency room. The car is totaled and so is my job. But I’m getting better and nothing is broken. I could barely move for the first two days with massive pain levels, but I’m only hurting REALLY BADLY today and sitting in my usual office chair. As I have covered this in our Telegram group, complete with video, I won’t go into it any more deeply here. I got well enough fast enough that I had my wife drive me to work yesterday and I drove my own car home… with a little pain but not bad. I couldn’t find anyone else to do it, as it is a stick shift and drivers were not being found.
    • I feel I’m misusing the Galago Pro 2, that it doesn’t quite fit my use needs. I’d like to move it to someone who could use it better, and get a 15.6” or 17” ThinkPad. I need the larger keyboard, and to a point the larger screen. According to eBay, what I could get for the Galago Pro — with an i5, 16 Gb RAM, 14” form factor, a 1Tb hard drive and a 256 M.2 drive — would get me a fairly nice ThinkPad with an i7 and 16 Gb RAM, and I don’t care about the size of storage as I have enough of my own. I posted a swap offer on Mastodon and a couple groups, but have garnered no interest as yet. Contact me if you’re interested, or I may take other means of moving it.
    • One of my domain names came up for renewal, and the registrar tripled the price. So I had to go through the effort to move nameservers. Mission accomplished.
    • We finished reading “Grave Peril” and started in on “Summer’s Knight”, the 5th book in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. So far it seems that Harry keeps getting deeper and deeper with no rest and no advancement. In a comparable series, Demon Squad by Tim Marquitz, the lead character, Frank, got stronger with each book’s events. Frank had a cast of characters who were introduced early and came and went as needed, Harry seems to keep inventing new friends and enemies each book although there are some notable holdovers. My wife seems to be more critical of both the main character and the direction of the series as compared to other series we’ve read as we get deeper in the series.
  • Tony Watts
    • Live streaming music
      • Did a live 35 min set on Facebook last night.  Recorded on my back deck just using the phone’s microphone, this time
      • Attempted unsuccessfully to live stream with my old PC, old audio interface, and droidcam for live streaming.  Too glitchy but I think this is due to the underpowered Core Duo PC I was using
    • Purchased Presonus Studio 24C
        • Will test this with Android, Dell 7130 
    • Helped a friend get set up for home vocal recording
    • Played some games on Google Stadia
    • Updated Lineage 16 to 17 (Android 10 Update)
    • Have been watching Mr. Robot
    • Local breweries doing carry-out – highly recommend 
  • Bo
    • Update on my wife’s exploded PC
    • pfSense and OPNsense
    • Resurrected a dead podcast
  • Joe
    • Kim Harrison the Hollows.
      • The books have slightly improved and I did finish the series
    • Started the Nate Temple series By Shayne Silvers
      • Decent book series.  Not great but decent
    • Red Dwarf feature length
      • Not all I was hoping for but it did feed the addiction.  
    • Watched Dog Soldiers and VFW at the recommendation of the guys over at ECN
      • Really good movies 
    • Just got done with Eden 6 on Borderlands 3 and am back on Pandora.
      • Have not done much of the sidequests although I am playing through the DLC for the better weapons and experience
      • Think Eden 6 will be good for the next play through when I decide to go exploring
    • Got my 3D printer working.  Still haven’t done much printing yet
      • Cleared the clog and started testing different prints.
      • Was able to print a couple of parts but still dialing in the settings for the best print
      • Then it would not maintain temperature again on the hotend
      • So i pulled the board and checked it but everything seemed fine
      • After that I replaced the heating element for the hot end
      • I have to say it seems to be working much better and the power supply does not seem to be getting as hot as before.  Hopefully that is the last fix that i need to do on it for a while
      • But I did get to learn a lot taking it apart and putting it back together
      • Lots of work to get done on it but I am enjoying
    • Started messing around with blender and tinkercad and I have to say blender is way too power user for me at this time.
      • Tinkercad on the other hand was very easy to use the web version for the simple designs that I was creating
      • Plus a couple of youtube tutorials really helped out
    • Fixed a Sony XB700bt which is one of the few headsets with USB-C charging and a 30 hour battery
      • Just needed to replace the drivers on it as the first one I had ordered to make a bt receiver did not have any but turned out unsuitable for the task
      • It may have a 30 hour battery life but definitely not a 30 hour wear time.  I find them very uncomfortable.
      • So i am going to 3d print an adapter to increase the size of the earcups and see if that helps(what i am doing in tinkercad)
    • Tried out Q4OS on the 7140 with Plasma
      • Had a bit of trouble with the installation and the startup
      • But even beyond that I had trouble with the occasional kernel panic at startup 
      • When it did work it looked very familiar but I used to be a Kubuntu user way back when
      • Interesting issue with the gyros on the table.  It would not rotate but when the gyros were activated it would cause the keyboard and touchpad to quit working.  Sometimes the USB port would also quit working.  It would be a random amount of time before they came back if they were going to come back.
      • Also the occasional random restart but it is hard to judge on a tablet that isn’t exactly mainstream.
      •  Did have to manually install the drivers for audio in order to get it to see the card.  But although it could see the card it did not work.  
      • USB sound card also did not work. Along with Bluetooth headsets not working.
    • Listener Dustin purchased one of my turtle beach stealth headsets for his kid.  Thank you
      • Also sent me a couple of broken headphones that i am in the process of working on
      • Some Samsung in ear oems and a pair of monoprice DJ headsets
        • Mentioned that the speakers may be blown

The News: 

Security Update: 

Announcements: 

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, May 3, 2020. That’s 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.
]]> 4361 mintCast 333 – Half of the Beast (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-333-half-of-the-beast-mp3/ Wed, 22 Apr 2020 06:52:31 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4359 Then, in the news, Firefox 75 sees daylight, Mozilla and Red Hat get new CEOs, Gnome Challenges the community and more.
In security, Git gets tricked.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, I fiddle with audio equipment, Tony Hughes reinstalls Mint, Moss fights with a giant pickup truck, Tony Watts streams live-ish, Bo makes sense of OPNsense, and Joe blends with Blender.

Then, in the news, Firefox 75 sees daylight, Mozilla and Red Hat get new CEOs, Gnome Challenges the community and more.

In security, Git gets tricked.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

  • Leo
    • Still playing with mics and their configuration. Especially in Linux. I may have no choice but to learn to live with Jack.
    • Have two setups now: The Behringer UM2 with the Behringer XM8500 as mentioned last show and a Focusrite Scarlett Solo with the Rode Podmic. Both XLR based setups.
    • The UM2 connected to either mic is fantastic. Very little noise compared to the MXL990 I had before.
    • The Scarlett Solo is where the issues start. The quality is awesome, but it seems Linux, or rather PulseAudio tends to trip all over itself when in use. Seems when one application is running sound, things are flawless. The moment another device tries to take priority of the mic or playback things can get unpredictable. These issues seem to only crop up when I’m using the input and output of the Scarlett Solo at the same time.
  • Tony H 
    • So I finally got around to fitting the Icy Dock 2.5” x 4 Bay drive port into my tower PC this week. I have been having some issues with my Tower and decided to get a 1TB SSD to reinstall Mint 19.3 Mate as the main drive then use the Dock for Dual booting other Linux Distros. As the Dock has 4 bays and my motherboard only has 4 SATA connections the 5.5” DVD drive has been removed and all the discs including the 1TB are now hot swappable without needing to access inside the PC case. At the moment I have 2 128Gb SSD’s with Ubuntu Mate 20.04 Beta and Q4OS in 2 of the remaining 3 bays and all these could be installed with more than one OS, so lots of scope for hardware testing different Linux and BSD Distributions as I move forward. 
    • Time will tell if the reinstall has cured the issues I have been having with the PC and in the last few weeks particularly with Mumble constantly crashing, we shall see how things go this evening during the recording.
    • I continue to play with my matchbox models and this week have been restoring/customising some mark 10 Jags, a few Lamborghini Mazal’s and a couple of Ferraris, I also took delivery of a few display worthy models and a few for further restoration projects down the line.
    • I took part in the BDLL Euro edition last week and was able to go to bed at a sensible hour as it is between 8pm and 10pm on the Saturday evening my time, the same as the mintCast recording time, which is far more sociable for me, and you guys in the US get the opportunity to be part of 2 shows on one day. This morning it was 1am-3am my time so if I am a bit jet lagged you know why. 
    • My New headset arrived as I had damaged the 3.5mm jack on one of my others but this was not an expensive buy and I’ve still to get the mic to work acceptably for Zoom use so continue to just use it for listening to the audio and use my laptop’s microphone for audio in, it is actually surprisingly good if there is no background noise.
    • And finally myself and Moss recorded our 12th episode of Distrohoppers Digest despite my issues with Mumble we got through it, marking a year since we started. So it is onward into year 2, we may have a guest host for our next episode if we can find a mutually agreeable time to record, otherwise we may have our first Distrohoppers listener edition :-).        
  • Moss
    • We had another wonderful episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest, our twelfth episode and the conclusion of our first year. I even had a tad bit of extra experience: Tony’s machine was dropping Mumble from time to time, so I set up and saved the Mumble Recording for the first time ever.
    • I tried setting up Solus once more. It absolutely refuses to use an existing partition for me. The installer looks just like Ubiquity, but there is no way to select *and change* a partition. I did try installing it as a sole distro and it worked just fine — which means it blew away three perfectly good distros doing so. I don’t think I’m going to be reviewing Solus again unless and until they change/fix that.
    • It looks as if I’m going to be reviewing Ubuntu Mate 20.04 for the next episode of DHD. I’ve also loaded Ubuntu Studio 20.04 Beta, but I’m not happy with it yet and XFCE is not my friend.
    • Thanks to Joe, I have a new Bluetooth headset, an LG HBS770. It works really great in all respects, except I couldn’t get it to connect to this computer before the show, which is probably my fault for deleting more Bluetooth from the machine than I could find to reinstall.
    • This past Wednesday, while driving for work, I got in a REALLY BAD auto accident, resulting in me having to be taken by ambulance to the emergency room. The car is totaled and so is my job. But I’m getting better and nothing is broken. I could barely move for the first two days with massive pain levels, but I’m only hurting REALLY BADLY today and sitting in my usual office chair. As I have covered this in our Telegram group, complete with video, I won’t go into it any more deeply here. I got well enough fast enough that I had my wife drive me to work yesterday and I drove my own car home… with a little pain but not bad. I couldn’t find anyone else to do it, as it is a stick shift and drivers were not being found.
    • I feel I’m misusing the Galago Pro 2, that it doesn’t quite fit my use needs. I’d like to move it to someone who could use it better, and get a 15.6” or 17” ThinkPad. I need the larger keyboard, and to a point the larger screen. According to eBay, what I could get for the Galago Pro — with an i5, 16 Gb RAM, 14” form factor, a 1Tb hard drive and a 256 M.2 drive — would get me a fairly nice ThinkPad with an i7 and 16 Gb RAM, and I don’t care about the size of storage as I have enough of my own. I posted a swap offer on Mastodon and a couple groups, but have garnered no interest as yet. Contact me if you’re interested, or I may take other means of moving it.
    • One of my domain names came up for renewal, and the registrar tripled the price. So I had to go through the effort to move nameservers. Mission accomplished.
    • We finished reading “Grave Peril” and started in on “Summer’s Knight”, the 5th book in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. So far it seems that Harry keeps getting deeper and deeper with no rest and no advancement. In a comparable series, Demon Squad by Tim Marquitz, the lead character, Frank, got stronger with each book’s events. Frank had a cast of characters who were introduced early and came and went as needed, Harry seems to keep inventing new friends and enemies each book although there are some notable holdovers. My wife seems to be more critical of both the main character and the direction of the series as compared to other series we’ve read as we get deeper in the series.
  • Tony Watts
    • Live streaming music
      • Did a live 35 min set on Facebook last night.  Recorded on my back deck just using the phone’s microphone, this time
      • Attempted unsuccessfully to live stream with my old PC, old audio interface, and droidcam for live streaming.  Too glitchy but I think this is due to the underpowered Core Duo PC I was using
    • Purchased Presonus Studio 24C
        • Will test this with Android, Dell 7130 
    • Helped a friend get set up for home vocal recording
    • Played some games on Google Stadia
    • Updated Lineage 16 to 17 (Android 10 Update)
    • Have been watching Mr. Robot
    • Local breweries doing carry-out – highly recommend 
  • Bo
    • Update on my wife’s exploded PC
    • pfSense and OPNsense
    • Resurrected a dead podcast
  • Joe
    • Kim Harrison the Hollows.
      • The books have slightly improved and I did finish the series
    • Started the Nate Temple series By Shayne Silvers
      • Decent book series.  Not great but decent
    • Red Dwarf feature length
      • Not all I was hoping for but it did feed the addiction.  
    • Watched Dog Soldiers and VFW at the recommendation of the guys over at ECN
      • Really good movies 
    • Just got done with Eden 6 on Borderlands 3 and am back on Pandora.
      • Have not done much of the sidequests although I am playing through the DLC for the better weapons and experience
      • Think Eden 6 will be good for the next play through when I decide to go exploring
    • Got my 3D printer working.  Still haven’t done much printing yet
      • Cleared the clog and started testing different prints.
      • Was able to print a couple of parts but still dialing in the settings for the best print
      • Then it would not maintain temperature again on the hotend
      • So i pulled the board and checked it but everything seemed fine
      • After that I replaced the heating element for the hot end
      • I have to say it seems to be working much better and the power supply does not seem to be getting as hot as before.  Hopefully that is the last fix that i need to do on it for a while
      • But I did get to learn a lot taking it apart and putting it back together
      • Lots of work to get done on it but I am enjoying
    • Started messing around with blender and tinkercad and I have to say blender is way too power user for me at this time.
      • Tinkercad on the other hand was very easy to use the web version for the simple designs that I was creating
      • Plus a couple of youtube tutorials really helped out
    • Fixed a Sony XB700bt which is one of the few headsets with USB-C charging and a 30 hour battery
      • Just needed to replace the drivers on it as the first one I had ordered to make a bt receiver did not have any but turned out unsuitable for the task
      • It may have a 30 hour battery life but definitely not a 30 hour wear time.  I find them very uncomfortable.
      • So i am going to 3d print an adapter to increase the size of the earcups and see if that helps(what i am doing in tinkercad)
    • Tried out Q4OS on the 7140 with Plasma
      • Had a bit of trouble with the installation and the startup
      • But even beyond that I had trouble with the occasional kernel panic at startup 
      • When it did work it looked very familiar but I used to be a Kubuntu user way back when
      • Interesting issue with the gyros on the table.  It would not rotate but when the gyros were activated it would cause the keyboard and touchpad to quit working.  Sometimes the USB port would also quit working.  It would be a random amount of time before they came back if they were going to come back.
      • Also the occasional random restart but it is hard to judge on a tablet that isn’t exactly mainstream.
      •  Did have to manually install the drivers for audio in order to get it to see the card.  But although it could see the card it did not work.  
      • USB sound card also did not work. Along with Bluetooth headsets not working.
    • Listener Dustin purchased one of my turtle beach stealth headsets for his kid.  Thank you
      • Also sent me a couple of broken headphones that i am in the process of working on
      • Some Samsung in ear oems and a pair of monoprice DJ headsets
        • Mentioned that the speakers may be blown

The News: 

Security Update: 

Announcements: 

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, May 3, 2020. That’s 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.
]]> 4359 mintCast 331 – The Art of Tracking https://mintcast.org/mintcast-331-the-art-of-tracking/ Wed, 25 Mar 2020 05:15:53 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4303 Then, in the news, NPM gets acquired, OBS adds a number, Purism and Pinebook have new releases, Basilisk takes us back in time, and Gnome gets new features.
In security, Edge is coming, and it’s worse than we thought.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo upgrades TLP, Tony Hughes tinkers with LMDE, Manjaro fights with Moss, Josh gets cancelled, and Joe works from home.

Then, in the news, NPM gets acquired, OBS adds a number, Purism and Pinebook have new releases, Basilisk takes us back in time, and Gnome gets new features.

In security, Edge is coming, and it’s worse than we thought.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

  • Leo
    • Updated to TLP 1.3, from 1.1.
    • Got some $16 Tascam TH-02’s. The original earpads really dug into my ears in a very painful way. Purchased some Brainwavz replacement earpads for the Audio Technica M50X’s. They are the red and fuzzy types and oh so comfortable. My ears warm up for a bit, but I can easily wear these headphones for hours, comfortably.
    • I may upgrade to the actual M50X’s one day. It’s between those and the Behringer 770’s.
    • Plan on running Ubuntu 20.04 on my Lenovo T450s until Linux Mint 20 comes out probably around June. Considering whether I should use the Beta or not.
    • I have Fedora 31 lurking as my 2nd distro right now, and am waiting for 32 to drop next month. This is making it hard.
  • Tony H 
    • Still Playing with my model cars, I will be doing much more of this over the coming weeks to help pass the time at the moment. If anyone wants to take a look at some of them there is a picture in the off topic section of the Discord channel.
    • Myself and Moss recorded our 11th Episode of Distrohoppers Digest Thursday 12th, we had a bump as I nearly missed the recording time due to the changed time difference at the moment but remembered just in time.
    • Watching Alan Pope’s YouTube channel, he did a great tutorial of creating a snap package, also the video before that was on the free software only option in Ubuntu, if you’re interested check out his channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/popeydc/videos
    • And now as everything is in lockdown due to this virus, my LUG created a virtual meeting yesterday morning via a Google Hangout so I still got to have my Saturday LUG fix for over 2 hours while not having to leave the house. I also Joined the BDLL international LUG at midnight my time as I could have a sleep in the following morning as my Worship community has closed our weekly meetings for the foreseeable future.
    • I also installed the Distribution release of Linux Mint Debian Edition as it went from Beta to DR on Friday, first impressions are good after installing the MATE DE although I had problems with the install not installing GRUB properly and after the third try at getting a bootable install, installed 19.3 as a dual boot and now Grub works and I can boot into LMDE. I will be doing a full review for the next Distrohoppers Digest. I had planned to review AntiX but after the install although it could see my WiFi card it could not find any networks when I scanned and as the install was a laptop It makes things difficult to run it as a credible daily driver.     
  • Moss
    • We had another lovely episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest, although we got a late start due to the confusion of time changes. I did manage to get to work on time, or 3 minutes late actually.
    • I’ve been going crazy on distros lately. I got Endeavour OS installed on my Galago Pro 2, got all the updates done, and then installed Zorin OS Lite to get my Grub menu back… to discover that Endeavour no longer boots. Black screen, no cursor or anything. I’ve tried a few things the guys in the DHD Telegram group suggested but no luck. I reinstalled, and found I had the Grub issue I had before, where each distro installed had multiple entries on the Grub menu in varying numbers. Bye-bye to Endeavour. I did report these issues to the Endeavour forum.
    • I got Manjaro to work on my Kudu, with XFCE desktop, co-resident with OpenMandriva 4.1 and Feren OS for now. And just Friday morning, I got MaBox installed on the Galago Pro, which gives me Manjaro with Openbox window manager. Since that time, however, MaBox has crashed my machine twice, taking my GRUB menu with it and, in particular, keeping me from being able to boot Mint. So I wiped it and Zorin Lite, deleted a partition on /dev/sdb, and reinstalled Zorin Lite. In the offing, I wiped KDE neon, but I have a blank partition I’m considering installing that to AFTER THE SHOW. There are now only 6 distro partitions on the Galago Pro 2 (as opposed to EFI, Restore, and Swap partitions), 4 on /dev/sda and 2 on /dev/sdb.
    • During all this, I discovered there are 19 entries in my EFI boot. I looked for an EFI editor and came up with rEFInd, which so far does not look like an EFI editor but rather a Grub/EFI replacement. I can get to my Grub boot menu through option #7, and I’ve identified which of my current installations boot from Options 1, 2, 3, 18, and 19. The menu would be more informative if I could edit the entries to better identify them, most either have an Ubuntu logo or a penguin logo, except Mint has a Mint logo (the old one). Until further notice, I have no idea how to edit the zombie distros from the EFI menu. Stay tuned for further details!
    • I was surprised to hear the Destination Linux team finally found Stacer in Episode 164;. I’m pretty sure I’ve been talking about that for nearly a year, and I’m not a self-proclaimed expert on Linux.
    • I GOT MY FIRST SPONSUS! It’s probably somebody I know, but they used a handle and their profile is not filled out, so I may never know. Welcome esskaybeenz! Every $3 is a help.  On top of that, I sold another CD of my music, and I’m busy setting up my music videos at LBRY.
    • Otherwise, things have been oddly lifelike. My wife and I are nearly halfway through Grave Peril. 
    • My boss is under stress from upper management, Covid-19 has cut our business by more than half, but I’m working 5 days a week at least until the state finally decides to go to lockdown. Tennessee is one of the last three states to make no mandatory closures of any kind. 
    • My mother is still doing as well as any 90-year-old deserves to be doing. And everything else is in a holding pattern.
  • Josh
    • I suddenly left school. With Coronavirus, schools here in the UK have shut and my exams have been cancelled. So that’s it for me. I now have 5/6 months of doing my own work.
    • I installed 20.04 and it’s really nice.
    • Started a new podcast, bit:cast
    • Launched a new magazine issue, micro:mag Issue 7
  • Joe
    • New Book series galore
      • Las Vegas paranormal police department Ian Dex novels by John P. Logsdon
        • Very short very puerile but I did listen to the whole series,  really missing a lot of detail but still enjoyable
      • Hex series Books Craig Zerf and Mia Darien
        • Also very short and not as juvenile but very tropeish, felt like I was reading a mix of the last dragon and the lone ranger
      • The Bowl of Souls by Trevor H Cooley
        • very sword and sorcery
        • Super good altogether I will take a look at this author’s other books.
      • Metal Mage series by Eric Vail.
        • Struggled through the first book
        • Do not recommend 
        • Very teenage pubescent fantasy
        • I would have read the second book to see if it improves but the reviews say it stays the same.
      • Hammonds Hardcases
        • Sci fi books
        • Good trilogy.  No complaints but nothing spectacular 
    • Self isolation
      • Kids are hating it
      • Working from home has its ups and down
      • Need more electronics to work on.  Send me an email if you have something that you think I might like to work on.  I will talk about it all on the show if you send it to me.
      • Also need to get back into my weight lifting from home groove
    • Borderlands 3 on steam
      • Enjoying playing it and the 2 expansions since it was 50 percent off on steam
      • Haven’t tested much out yet but I am currently enjoying fl4k for my first playthrough 
    • Studying some on 3d printers but still need to take mine apart and put it back together. May do some upgrades at the same time.
    • Ordered a broken monoprice bluetooth dj headset.  Should get this week and while it will be a different fix for me I don’t think it will be hard.  And if I can’t fix it I will be able to use the top band to fix other headphones. Got at a really good price for it on ebay.
    • Fixed my other pair of Turtle Beach Z2s with the broken band. 
    • Setting up a multi boot on the Pi 4 using Berryboot
    • Still enjoying Fedora on the 7140
    • Installed CITRIX receiver on my garage PC so that I can work out there when the kids are getting loud inside.
      • Still an interesting setup you have to install the CITRIX deb and then fix the cert error
      • sudo ln -s /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/* /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts
      • Too bad it has been way too cold and still way too much pollen to work in the garage comfortably 
    • Reinstalled Windows on a T100ta so that it can replace the 11 year old Toshiba that we are using as a set top box – the Toshiba only has vga out.  Want to see if it can do better with lower power consumption. I am thinking that I will need to add a powered usb hub
      • Since it will be plugged in all the time I think I can get away with using the powered hub as the tablet charger as well.
      • Did have to use woeusb to setup the windows 

The News: 

Security Update: 

  •  Not Linux, YET.
    • Edge Breaks Privacy
    • Douglas Leith with the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College in Ireland, Edge sends privacy-invasive telemetry to Microsoft’s back-end servers — including “persistent” device identifiers and URLs typed into browsing pages. Brave ended up being the most private, with Firefox trailing in a second, less-private, group.

Announcements: 

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, April 5, 2020. That’s 8PM British Summer Time. Thanks Londoner, I hope I got that right. 🙂

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.
]]> 4303 mintCast 331 – The Art of Tracking (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-331-the-art-of-tracking-mp3/ Wed, 25 Mar 2020 05:15:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4301 Then, in the news, NPM gets acquired, OBS adds a number, Purism and Pinebook have new releases, Basilisk takes us back in time, and Gnome gets new features.
In security, Edge is coming, and it’s worse than we thought.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo upgrades TLP, Tony Hughes tinkers with LMDE, Manjaro fights with Moss, Josh gets cancelled, and Joe works from home.

Then, in the news, NPM gets acquired, OBS adds a number, Purism and Pinebook have new releases, Basilisk takes us back in time, and Gnome gets new features.

In security, Edge is coming, and it’s worse than we thought.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

  • Leo
    • Updated to TLP 1.3, from 1.1.
    • Got some $16 Tascam TH-02’s. The original earpads really dug into my ears in a very painful way. Purchased some Brainwavz replacement earpads for the Audio Technica M50X’s. They are the red and fuzzy types and oh so comfortable. My ears warm up for a bit, but I can easily wear these headphones for hours, comfortably.
    • I may upgrade to the actual M50X’s one day. It’s between those and the Behringer 770’s.
    • Plan on running Ubuntu 20.04 on my Lenovo T450s until Linux Mint 20 comes out probably around June. Considering whether I should use the Beta or not.
    • I have Fedora 31 lurking as my 2nd distro right now, and am waiting for 32 to drop next month. This is making it hard.
  • Tony H 
    • Still Playing with my model cars, I will be doing much more of this over the coming weeks to help pass the time at the moment. If anyone wants to take a look at some of them there is a picture in the off topic section of the Discord channel.
    • Myself and Moss recorded our 11th Episode of Distrohoppers Digest Thursday 12th, we had a bump as I nearly missed the recording time due to the changed time difference at the moment but remembered just in time.
    • Watching Alan Pope’s YouTube channel, he did a great tutorial of creating a snap package, also the video before that was on the free software only option in Ubuntu, if you’re interested check out his channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/popeydc/videos
    • And now as everything is in lockdown due to this virus, my LUG created a virtual meeting yesterday morning via a Google Hangout so I still got to have my Saturday LUG fix for over 2 hours while not having to leave the house. I also Joined the BDLL international LUG at midnight my time as I could have a sleep in the following morning as my Worship community has closed our weekly meetings for the foreseeable future.
    • I also installed the Distribution release of Linux Mint Debian Edition as it went from Beta to DR on Friday, first impressions are good after installing the MATE DE although I had problems with the install not installing GRUB properly and after the third try at getting a bootable install, installed 19.3 as a dual boot and now Grub works and I can boot into LMDE. I will be doing a full review for the next Distrohoppers Digest. I had planned to review AntiX but after the install although it could see my WiFi card it could not find any networks when I scanned and as the install was a laptop It makes things difficult to run it as a credible daily driver.     
  • Moss
    • We had another lovely episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest, although we got a late start due to the confusion of time changes. I did manage to get to work on time, or 3 minutes late actually.
    • I’ve been going crazy on distros lately. I got Endeavour OS installed on my Galago Pro 2, got all the updates done, and then installed Zorin OS Lite to get my Grub menu back… to discover that Endeavour no longer boots. Black screen, no cursor or anything. I’ve tried a few things the guys in the DHD Telegram group suggested but no luck. I reinstalled, and found I had the Grub issue I had before, where each distro installed had multiple entries on the Grub menu in varying numbers. Bye-bye to Endeavour. I did report these issues to the Endeavour forum.
    • I got Manjaro to work on my Kudu, with XFCE desktop, co-resident with OpenMandriva 4.1 and Feren OS for now. And just Friday morning, I got MaBox installed on the Galago Pro, which gives me Manjaro with Openbox window manager. Since that time, however, MaBox has crashed my machine twice, taking my GRUB menu with it and, in particular, keeping me from being able to boot Mint. So I wiped it and Zorin Lite, deleted a partition on /dev/sdb, and reinstalled Zorin Lite. In the offing, I wiped KDE neon, but I have a blank partition I’m considering installing that to AFTER THE SHOW. There are now only 6 distro partitions on the Galago Pro 2 (as opposed to EFI, Restore, and Swap partitions), 4 on /dev/sda and 2 on /dev/sdb.
    • During all this, I discovered there are 19 entries in my EFI boot. I looked for an EFI editor and came up with rEFInd, which so far does not look like an EFI editor but rather a Grub/EFI replacement. I can get to my Grub boot menu through option #7, and I’ve identified which of my current installations boot from Options 1, 2, 3, 18, and 19. The menu would be more informative if I could edit the entries to better identify them, most either have an Ubuntu logo or a penguin logo, except Mint has a Mint logo (the old one). Until further notice, I have no idea how to edit the zombie distros from the EFI menu. Stay tuned for further details!
    • I was surprised to hear the Destination Linux team finally found Stacer in Episode 164;. I’m pretty sure I’ve been talking about that for nearly a year, and I’m not a self-proclaimed expert on Linux.
    • I GOT MY FIRST SPONSUS! It’s probably somebody I know, but they used a handle and their profile is not filled out, so I may never know. Welcome esskaybeenz! Every $3 is a help.  On top of that, I sold another CD of my music, and I’m busy setting up my music videos at LBRY.
    • Otherwise, things have been oddly lifelike. My wife and I are nearly halfway through Grave Peril. 
    • My boss is under stress from upper management, Covid-19 has cut our business by more than half, but I’m working 5 days a week at least until the state finally decides to go to lockdown. Tennessee is one of the last three states to make no mandatory closures of any kind. 
    • My mother is still doing as well as any 90-year-old deserves to be doing. And everything else is in a holding pattern.
  • Josh
    • I suddenly left school. With Coronavirus, schools here in the UK have shut and my exams have been cancelled. So that’s it for me. I now have 5/6 months of doing my own work.
    • I installed 20.04 and it’s really nice.
    • Started a new podcast, bit:cast
    • Launched a new magazine issue, micro:mag Issue 7
  • Joe
    • New Book series galore
      • Las Vegas paranormal police department Ian Dex novels by John P. Logsdon
        • Very short very puerile but I did listen to the whole series,  really missing a lot of detail but still enjoyable
      • Hex series Books Craig Zerf and Mia Darien
        • Also very short and not as juvenile but very tropeish, felt like I was reading a mix of the last dragon and the lone ranger
      • The Bowl of Souls by Trevor H Cooley
        • very sword and sorcery
        • Super good altogether I will take a look at this author’s other books.
      • Metal Mage series by Eric Vail.
        • Struggled through the first book
        • Do not recommend 
        • Very teenage pubescent fantasy
        • I would have read the second book to see if it improves but the reviews say it stays the same.
      • Hammonds Hardcases
        • Sci fi books
        • Good trilogy.  No complaints but nothing spectacular 
    • Self isolation
      • Kids are hating it
      • Working from home has its ups and down
      • Need more electronics to work on.  Send me an email if you have something that you think I might like to work on.  I will talk about it all on the show if you send it to me.
      • Also need to get back into my weight lifting from home groove
    • Borderlands 3 on steam
      • Enjoying playing it and the 2 expansions since it was 50 percent off on steam
      • Haven’t tested much out yet but I am currently enjoying fl4k for my first playthrough 
    • Studying some on 3d printers but still need to take mine apart and put it back together. May do some upgrades at the same time.
    • Ordered a broken monoprice bluetooth dj headset.  Should get this week and while it will be a different fix for me I don’t think it will be hard.  And if I can’t fix it I will be able to use the top band to fix other headphones. Got at a really good price for it on ebay.
    • Fixed my other pair of Turtle Beach Z2s with the broken band. 
    • Setting up a multi boot on the Pi 4 using Berryboot
    • Still enjoying Fedora on the 7140
    • Installed CITRIX receiver on my garage PC so that I can work out there when the kids are getting loud inside.
      • Still an interesting setup you have to install the CITRIX deb and then fix the cert error
      • sudo ln -s /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/* /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts
      • Too bad it has been way too cold and still way too much pollen to work in the garage comfortably 
    • Reinstalled Windows on a T100ta so that it can replace the 11 year old Toshiba that we are using as a set top box – the Toshiba only has vga out.  Want to see if it can do better with lower power consumption. I am thinking that I will need to add a powered usb hub
      • Since it will be plugged in all the time I think I can get away with using the powered hub as the tablet charger as well.
      • Did have to use woeusb to setup the windows 

The News: 

Security Update: 

  •  Not Linux, YET.
    • Edge Breaks Privacy
    • Douglas Leith with the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College in Ireland, Edge sends privacy-invasive telemetry to Microsoft’s back-end servers — including “persistent” device identifiers and URLs typed into browsing pages. Brave ended up being the most private, with Firefox trailing in a second, less-private, group.

Announcements: 

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, April 5, 2020. That’s 8PM British Summer Time. Thanks Londoner, I hope I got that right. 🙂

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.
]]> 4301 mintCast 315 – Les, Dan and the Banter https://mintcast.org/mintcast-315-les-dan-and-the-banter/ Wed, 14 Aug 2019 13:54:29 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3827 Then, our news, we discuss new hardware, the death of the floppy drive (or not), Demise of another Linux magazine and some controversy in the OS world.
We save the security section for the second half in the interest of time.
Download
]]>

Download

In the first half, Dan learns Jekyll and Ruby web development, Les teaches kids to code in Manchester, Leo has been testing Ubuntu 19.04 and attending a wedding, Bo is now certified, Tony Hughes has been Volunteering again and running ‘ARCH’, Moss is Distrohopping big time and is getting a new Pi 2B, Josh is publishing another issue of his magazine, and Joe buys new ‘old’ laptops for the kids and plays with Pis.

Then, our news, we discuss new hardware, the death of the floppy drive (or not), Demise of another Linux magazine and some controversy in the OS world.

We save the security section for the second half in the interest of time.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Dan
    • I’ve been coming to terms with Jekyll and Ruby web development. I forked the OggCamp website on GitHub into a new branch and hacked a new theme onto it. More work than it sounds. – https://github.com/oggcamp/oggcamp.github.io
    • Liverpool LUG – I talked about video streaming and OBS on Linux. I also now have a new MiraBox HSV321 USB capture card that works well on Linux. It even advertises that it works on Ubuntu and Ubuntu Mate right next to Windows and Mac – https://www.amazon.com/MiraBox-Loop-out-Streaming-Recording-HSV321/dp/B07C6KCBYBMac on the box.
    • What’s the LUG situation like where you guys are? There’s been a lot of discussion here in the UK about the decline of LUGs.
    • I am currently wrestling with getting my other podcast Tales Of The Unattested into iTunes or Apple podcasts as it’s now called. It looks as though I need an iTunes account where I’ve bought something from them. How do you guys deal with this? Is that true? Am I the only person who has never used iTunes? Hehe 😀 – UPDATE: I just tried this again on the Apple Podcasts Connect website, and I have to sign a legal agreement just to sign in, WTF??!!!
  • Les
  • Leo
    • Spent some time in Austin for a wedding. Had a great time!
      • Fry’s is dying.
    • Playing with the Transparent Panels extension in Mint.
      • Desktop Cube and Wobbly Windows are available!
    • Upgraded to Mint 19.2
      • Weather Applet was out of date, had to uninstall and reinstall – though I think I could have got along fine just updating in the Downloads section. I was too quick to remove to get a good test — This was step two in the Upgrade Instructions!
      • Really enjoying the return of the Ubuntu fonts in Mint 19.2.
    • Been testing how I get along on Ubuntu 19.04. Overall very usable.
  • Bo
  • Tony H
    • We recorded our 4th episode of Distrohoppers Digest which went well, a few glitches with the post production process with feedburner not allowing file sizes greater than 1Mb once I realised this I was able to resolve the issue. (212 downloads as of today!)
    • Ordered a new 4Tb HDD as my second backup drive is only 2TB and Full.
    • I’ve been in Birmingham at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre doing some voluntary work which is why I missed the last show, although fortunately I was free to record DHD so I got one podcast recorded form there.
    • Watching the new episode of Red Dwarf (look up the Automobile Association Advert on YouTube)
    • Finally I can say “I Run Arch” in the guise of Endeavor OS, and surprise, surprise, I quite like it. Then Bo goes and tells me he hasn’t got it running at the moment so archCast is on hold for the moment. :-)) [Moss is also giving strong consideration to Manjaro for September]
  • Moss
    • We had a splendid time recording Episode 004 of Distrohoppers’ Digest, and have had a lot of feedback, mostly positive except for those who don’t like my choice of music. I’ve downloaded a few things to try for the August show. Some of our listeners have derided me gently for refusing to use Arch. I am slipping on that stand, but not this month. And they became even more amused when they found I have been running Sabayon, which is Gentoo at the core. It is sweet, Gentoo or no. I’m fighting with Mageia 7.1, and am ready to give up.
    • The IdeaPad has been completely reworked. Our listener Kat wondered why I set it up with Legacy Boot, so I started over with UEFI. That went so poorly that I went back to Legacy Boot and started over again. I now have a partition table which more resembles that of my ThinkPad, other than being equal sized partitions. If you want to know what’s on them… hold your breath and wait for Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 005, to be recorded on August 28, 2019.
    • One of the listeners of Distrohoppers’ Digest has taken pity on me and is sending me a Raspberry Pi 2B… paying postage from UK. While I am more than slightly embarrassed, I would love to be even more embarrassed by someone sending me an Entroware or Juno laptop (or a US listener send me a large System76 laptop)… I am poor, I am humble, but I am not too proud to accept silicon charity.
    • History lesson and outcome: We raised $130 back in April and May for me to go to SouthEast LinuxFest if sufficient funds were raised. Many thanks to the users who did donate to this effort, which was started by listener Jackie Moore. We didn’t get close to what was needed. $20 of that was earmarked by the donor to be used for my wife’s immigration case should the fundraiser fail, leaving $110 to be accounted for. I stated that I would donate this money, split between Linux Mint and Archive.org. I donated $55 on June 3 to Linux Mint in the name of the mintCast team; it shows in the July newsletter. The other donation of $55 to Archive.org was made on August 8. And we also got the immigration case in the mail to USCIS.
  • Josh
    • Been finishing off Issue 5 of micro:mag. We released on Friday and we got a really good response. It’s interesting to see how releasing on a weekday effects downloads. We normally do it at the weekends.
    • Installed Deepin on my laptop but had to uninstall due to them messing up the download repositories.
    • Installing Linux requires a Bitlocker key when you boot into Windows for the first time.
    • I installed Zorin OS and the desktop is lovely, the dark theme is really nice.
    • I managed to install MS Office using Crossover which is a plus. It works well except for the odd glitch but that’s expected.
    • I’ve had troubles with UK based, eBuyer over returning my GPU. It’s going to take 28 days to even get a response. They’re known for misleading customers over return. Even though they’re sorting it for me, they keep claiming the warranty is with the manufacturer and not them. Hopefully it’s sorted soon.
    • In other returns news, Google were really good about my Pixel 3. I sent it to them and in under a week of me posting it, I had a brand new unopened phone sent back. If only eBuyer could be the same 😀
  • Joe
    • Boring again
    • Bought 3 old laptops for a really good price and will be setting them up for my kids
      • However they require Windows for school 🙁
      • Updated one of them to Windows 10. Not sure if it will be good enough to do the tasks required
      • The HP mini was a bit of a surprise
        • First tried Windows 10 install but it would only bluescreen after the install for some driver reason. May try while connected to ethernet but i don’t know if that affects the install with Windows.
        • Installed Linux Mint MATE 64 which worked great
        • Did a YouTube test and the pages loaded smooth and video played at lower quality in fullscreen mode with no stuttering or glitching
        • Thinking about using the Mini as a test box or file server since it is too hot for the drives to work well in my garage. For now i may just put my hdd box inside connected to my actual server.
        • If I don’t use one of the Pi’s for that
        • May set it up as a Batocera box for the kids
      • Reread the Iron Druid series in a couple of weeks
        • Wanted a somewhat familiar series for the long drive to Florida and back so that i had something to keep me occupied but not so much that I became distracted
        • Spent a few days hanging out with my parents and grandparents
        • My kids are home now
      • One of my monitors died out in the garage so a friend was kind enough to give me another.
        • Did have to get another tv mount stand but it worked out well
      • Also getting all of my older pi’s ready for some projects
        • Want to try out Volumio since I was a bit disappointed in the Mopidy builds i have done before
        • Going to setup another pi hole but keep it restricted to the kids router if i can
        • Still have not set up a Steamlink on the Pi and I have wanted to for a while.
      • Took an old clock and removed the mechanical portion, added the echo input and a bluetooth speaker
        • Thinking about redoing the face portion and adding a proper mount instead of two sided tape.

THE NEWS:

    • Linux Mint 19.2 Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE Released
    • Note 10 Announced
      • Note 10: 6.3-inch Full HD, HDR10+ display, three rear cameras (16MP ultra-wide, 12MP wide-angle, 12MP telephoto), 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage and a 3,500mAh battery. $945 – 1299
      • Note 10 Plus: 6.8-inch QHD, HDR10+ display, four rear cameras (16MP ultra-wide, 12MP wide-angle, 12MP telephoto, DepthVision camera), 12GB of RAM, 256GB or 512GB of storage and a 4,300mAh battery. $1099 – 1399
      • NexDock 2
    • Librem 5 Phone Price + Specs Finalised – Josh
      • Processor: i.MX8M (Quad Core) max. 1.5GHz
      • Memory: 3GB RAM
      • Storage: 32 GB eMMC internal storageJoshJosh
      • Display : 5.7″ IPS TFT screen @ 720×1440
      • Front Camera: 8 MPixel
      • Back Camera: 13 MPixel w/LED flash
      • Sound: 1 earpiece speaker, 3.5mm headphone jack
      • $700!!
    • Pinephone $150, not yet available but then neither is the Librem 5.
      • Allwinner A64 Quad Core SOC with Mali 400 MP2 GPU
      • 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM
      • 5.95″ LCD 1440×720, 18:9 aspect ratio (hardened glass)
      • Bootable Micro SD,
      • 16GB eMMC
      • HD Digital Video Out
      • USB – C (Power, Data and Video Out)
      • Quectel EG-25G with worldwide bands
      • WiFi: 802.11 /b/g/n, single-band, hotspot capable
      • Bluetooth: 4.0, A2DP
      • GNSS: GPS, GPS-A, GLONASS
      • Vibrator
      • RGB status LED
      • Selfie and Main camera (2/5Mpx respectively)
      • Main Camera: Single OV6540, 5MP, 1/4″, LED Flash
      • Selfie Camera: Single GC2035, 2MP, f/2.8, 1/5″
      • Sensors: accelerator, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer, ambient light
      • 3 external switches, up down and power
      • Hardware switches: LTE/GNSS, WiFi, Microphone, Speaker, USB
      • Samsung J7 Form-Factor 3000mAh replacable battery
      • Headphone Jack
    • The Death of the Floppy Drive Report Responsibly! It’s not out of the kernel yet, and no direct plans are in place to do that.
    • The Right To Choose: LibreOffice or SoftMaker FreeOffice… or no office at all. Manjaro offers nonfreedom, draws the wrath of many. SoftMaker has apparently also agreed to modify FreeOffice so that it *can* save to MS formats, a feature previously removed to encourage purchases of SoftMaker Office.
    • LibreOffice 6.3 Released
      • Compatibility with drawingML, SmartArt, and Pivot Tables has been improved
      • Faster loading, lookups and overall performance in Calc and Writer
      • And a quick-launch drop-down in Calc to access frequently used formulas
    • ZFS Coming to Ubuntu 19.10
    • The Linux Journal Ceases Publication

 

      • Linux Format is still publishing

WRAP-UP:

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

  • Josh for working on redesigning our website, setting up the YouTube stream, and providing lots of technical help.
  • Bytemark hosting for providing the new hosting server for the website.
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files.
  • The folks at Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we use to communicate
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about. [Thanks Clem!]
]]> 3827 mintCast 315 – Les, Dan and the Banter (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-315-les-dan-and-the-banter-mp3/ Wed, 14 Aug 2019 13:53:56 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3825 Then, our news, we discuss new hardware, the death of the floppy drive (or not), Demise of another Linux magazine and some controversy in the OS world.
We save the security section for the second half in the interest of time.
Download
]]>

Download

In the first half, Dan learns Jekyll and Ruby web development, Les teaches kids to code in Manchester, Leo has been testing Ubuntu 19.04 and attending a wedding, Bo is now certified, Tony Hughes has been Volunteering again and running ‘ARCH’, Moss is Distrohopping big time and is getting a new Pi 2B, Josh is publishing another issue of his magazine, and Joe buys new ‘old’ laptops for the kids and plays with Pis.

Then, our news, we discuss new hardware, the death of the floppy drive (or not), Demise of another Linux magazine and some controversy in the OS world.

We save the security section for the second half in the interest of time.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Dan
    • I’ve been coming to terms with Jekyll and Ruby web development. I forked the OggCamp website on GitHub into a new branch and hacked a new theme onto it. More work than it sounds. – https://github.com/oggcamp/oggcamp.github.io
    • Liverpool LUG – I talked about video streaming and OBS on Linux. I also now have a new MiraBox HSV321 USB capture card that works well on Linux. It even advertises that it works on Ubuntu and Ubuntu Mate right next to Windows and Mac – https://www.amazon.com/MiraBox-Loop-out-Streaming-Recording-HSV321/dp/B07C6KCBYBMac on the box.
    • What’s the LUG situation like where you guys are? There’s been a lot of discussion here in the UK about the decline of LUGs.
    • I am currently wrestling with getting my other podcast Tales Of The Unattested into iTunes or Apple podcasts as it’s now called. It looks as though I need an iTunes account where I’ve bought something from them. How do you guys deal with this? Is that true? Am I the only person who has never used iTunes? Hehe 😀 – UPDATE: I just tried this again on the Apple Podcasts Connect website, and I have to sign a legal agreement just to sign in, WTF??!!!
  • Les
  • Leo
    • Spent some time in Austin for a wedding. Had a great time!
      • Fry’s is dying.
    • Playing with the Transparent Panels extension in Mint.
      • Desktop Cube and Wobbly Windows are available!
    • Upgraded to Mint 19.2
      • Weather Applet was out of date, had to uninstall and reinstall – though I think I could have got along fine just updating in the Downloads section. I was too quick to remove to get a good test — This was step two in the Upgrade Instructions!
      • Really enjoying the return of the Ubuntu fonts in Mint 19.2.
    • Been testing how I get along on Ubuntu 19.04. Overall very usable.
  • Bo
  • Tony H
    • We recorded our 4th episode of Distrohoppers Digest which went well, a few glitches with the post production process with feedburner not allowing file sizes greater than 1Mb once I realised this I was able to resolve the issue. (212 downloads as of today!)
    • Ordered a new 4Tb HDD as my second backup drive is only 2TB and Full.
    • I’ve been in Birmingham at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre doing some voluntary work which is why I missed the last show, although fortunately I was free to record DHD so I got one podcast recorded form there.
    • Watching the new episode of Red Dwarf (look up the Automobile Association Advert on YouTube)
    • Finally I can say “I Run Arch” in the guise of Endeavor OS, and surprise, surprise, I quite like it. Then Bo goes and tells me he hasn’t got it running at the moment so archCast is on hold for the moment. :-)) [Moss is also giving strong consideration to Manjaro for September]
  • Moss
    • We had a splendid time recording Episode 004 of Distrohoppers’ Digest, and have had a lot of feedback, mostly positive except for those who don’t like my choice of music. I’ve downloaded a few things to try for the August show. Some of our listeners have derided me gently for refusing to use Arch. I am slipping on that stand, but not this month. And they became even more amused when they found I have been running Sabayon, which is Gentoo at the core. It is sweet, Gentoo or no. I’m fighting with Mageia 7.1, and am ready to give up.
    • The IdeaPad has been completely reworked. Our listener Kat wondered why I set it up with Legacy Boot, so I started over with UEFI. That went so poorly that I went back to Legacy Boot and started over again. I now have a partition table which more resembles that of my ThinkPad, other than being equal sized partitions.  If you want to know what’s on them… hold your breath and wait for Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 005, to be recorded on August 28, 2019.
    • One of the listeners of Distrohoppers’ Digest has taken pity on me and is sending me a Raspberry Pi 2B… paying postage from UK. While I am more than slightly embarrassed, I would love to be even more embarrassed by someone sending me an Entroware or Juno laptop (or a US listener send me a large System76 laptop)… I am poor, I am humble, but I am not too proud to accept silicon charity.
    • History lesson and outcome: We raised $130 back in April and May for me to go to SouthEast LinuxFest if sufficient funds were raised. Many thanks to the users who did donate to this effort, which was started by listener Jackie Moore. We didn’t get close to what was needed. $20 of that was earmarked by the donor to be used for my wife’s immigration case should the fundraiser fail, leaving $110 to be accounted for. I stated that I would donate this money, split between Linux Mint and Archive.org. I donated $55 on June 3 to Linux Mint in the name of the mintCast team; it shows in the July newsletter. The other donation of $55 to Archive.org was made on August 8. And we also got the immigration case in the mail to USCIS.
  • Josh
    • Been finishing off Issue 5 of micro:mag. We released on Friday and we got a really good response. It’s interesting to see how releasing on a weekday effects downloads. We normally do it at the weekends.
    • Installed Deepin on my laptop but had to uninstall due to them messing up the download repositories.
    • Installing Linux requires a Bitlocker key when you boot into Windows for the first time.
    • I installed Zorin OS and the desktop is lovely, the dark theme is really nice.
    • I managed to install MS Office using Crossover which is a plus. It works well except for the odd glitch but that’s expected.
    • I’ve had troubles with UK based, eBuyer over returning my GPU. It’s going to take 28 days to even get a response. They’re known for misleading customers over return. Even though they’re sorting it for me, they keep claiming the warranty is with the manufacturer and not them. Hopefully it’s sorted soon.
    • In other returns news, Google were really good about my Pixel 3. I sent it to them and in under a week of me posting it, I had a brand new unopened phone sent back. If only eBuyer could be the same 😀
  • Joe
    • Boring again
    • Bought 3 old laptops for a really good price and will be setting them up for my kids
      • However they require Windows for school 🙁
      • Updated one of them to Windows 10.  Not sure if it will be good enough to do the tasks required
      • The HP mini was a bit of a surprise
        • First tried Windows 10 install but it would only bluescreen after the install for some driver reason.  May try while connected to ethernet but i don’t know if that affects the install with Windows.
        • Installed Linux Mint MATE 64 which worked great
        • Did a YouTube test and the pages loaded smooth and video played at lower quality in fullscreen mode with no stuttering or glitching
        • Thinking about using the Mini as a test box or file server since it is too hot for the drives to work well in my garage.  For now i may just put my hdd box inside connected to my actual server.
        • If I don’t use one of the Pi’s for that
        • May set it up as a Batocera box for the kids
      • Reread the Iron Druid series in a couple of weeks
        • Wanted a somewhat familiar series for the long drive to Florida and back so that i had something to keep me occupied but not so much that I became distracted
        • Spent a few days hanging out with my parents and grandparents
        • My kids are home now
      • One of my monitors died out in the garage so a friend was kind enough to give me another.
        • Did have to get another tv mount stand but it worked out well
      • Also getting all of my older pi’s ready for some projects
        • Want to try out Volumio since I was a bit disappointed in the Mopidy builds i have done before
        • Going to setup another pi hole but keep it restricted to the kids router if i can
        • Still have not set up a Steamlink on the Pi and I have wanted to for a while.
      • Took an old clock and removed the mechanical portion, added the echo input and a bluetooth speaker
        • Thinking about redoing the face portion and adding a proper mount instead of two sided tape.

THE NEWS:

    • Linux Mint 19.2 Cinnamon, MATE and XFCE Released
    • Note 10 Announced
      • Note 10: 6.3-inch Full HD, HDR10+ display, three rear cameras (16MP ultra-wide, 12MP wide-angle, 12MP telephoto), 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage and a 3,500mAh battery. $945 – 1299
      • Note 10 Plus: 6.8-inch QHD, HDR10+ display, four rear cameras (16MP ultra-wide, 12MP wide-angle, 12MP telephoto, DepthVision camera), 12GB of RAM, 256GB or 512GB of storage and a 4,300mAh battery. $1099 – 1399
      • NexDock 2
    • Librem 5 Phone Price + Specs Finalised – Josh
      • Processor: i.MX8M (Quad Core) max. 1.5GHz
      • Memory: 3GB RAM
      • Storage: 32 GB eMMC internal storageJoshJosh
      • Display : 5.7″ IPS TFT screen @ 720×1440
      • Front Camera: 8 MPixel
      • Back Camera: 13 MPixel w/LED flash
      • Sound: 1 earpiece speaker, 3.5mm headphone jack
      • $700!!
    • Pinephone $150, not yet available but then neither is the Librem 5.
      • Allwinner A64 Quad Core SOC with Mali 400 MP2 GPU
      • 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM
      • 5.95″ LCD 1440×720, 18:9 aspect ratio (hardened glass)
      • Bootable Micro SD,
      • 16GB eMMC
      • HD Digital Video Out
      • USB – C (Power, Data and Video Out)
      • Quectel EG-25G with worldwide bands
      • WiFi: 802.11 /b/g/n, single-band, hotspot capable
      • Bluetooth: 4.0, A2DP
      • GNSS: GPS, GPS-A, GLONASS
      • Vibrator
      • RGB status LED
      • Selfie and Main camera (2/5Mpx respectively)
      • Main Camera: Single OV6540, 5MP, 1/4″, LED Flash
      • Selfie Camera: Single GC2035, 2MP, f/2.8, 1/5″
      • Sensors: accelerator, gyro, proximity, compass, barometer, ambient light
      • 3 external switches, up down and power
      • Hardware switches: LTE/GNSS, WiFi, Microphone, Speaker, USB
      • Samsung J7 Form-Factor 3000mAh replacable battery
      • Headphone Jack
    • The Death of the Floppy Drive Report Responsibly! It’s not out of the kernel yet, and no direct plans are in place to do that.
    • The Right To Choose: LibreOffice or SoftMaker FreeOffice… or no office at all. Manjaro offers nonfreedom, draws the wrath of many. SoftMaker has apparently also agreed to modify FreeOffice so that it *can* save to MS formats, a feature previously removed to encourage purchases of SoftMaker Office.
    • LibreOffice 6.3 Released
      • Compatibility with drawingML, SmartArt, and Pivot Tables has been improved
      • Faster loading, lookups and overall performance in Calc and Writer
      • And a quick-launch drop-down in Calc to access frequently used formulas
    • ZFS Coming to Ubuntu 19.10
    • The Linux Journal Ceases Publication

 

      • Linux Format is still publishing

WRAP-UP:

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

  • Josh for working on redesigning our website, setting up the YouTube stream, and providing lots of technical help.
  • Bytemark hosting for providing the new hosting server for the website.
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files.
  • The folks at Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we use to communicate
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about. [Thanks Clem!]

 

]]> 3825 mintCast 314.5 – Moss Interview (for real) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-314-moss-interview-for-real/ Wed, 07 Aug 2019 21:35:37 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3815 Download
]]> LINUX INNARDS:

How Did You Get Into Linux/mintCast 

(Questions by community member Oliver Kelly)

We’re roasting Moss today…

What got you into Linux?

I started playing with Linux in the early 2000s, I got Slackware and Red Hat disks but was too timid to look up all the information on all my cards. I finally got Mandrake to run, and it was fun but was not ready to replace all the things I did. Mandrake had a numerical upgrade, which would not work on my computer. Then I tried SuSE (just before OpenSUSE started), and it ran. But it was strictly niche at that point. My next-door neighbor played with things and eventually had two Windows boxes, a homemade Hackintosh, and a Fedora box, all networked; years later, he passed and bequeathed all those computers to me. When XP users were being pushed to 7, I moved to Ubuntu Gnome. When Ubuntu moved to Unity, that would not run on my computer, and I went back to Win7. I had some Win 8/8.1 computers but got over that, and went back to 7. Then when they tried to force me to Win 10, I tried it, saw all the open holes, found I couldn’t close all the security holes, went back to 7, and found most of the holes were left open. So I installed Linux Mint 17 and have not gone back. Linux has grown substantially in the last 15 years, and is now, in my opinion, a better system than Windows.

 

What do you love most about Linux?

Variety. Fragmentation, if you will. If you want to make something different, whether better or not, you can, or you can find large groups of people working on it.

 

What’s your current favorite distro?

Tie between Linux Mint 19.1 and Bodhi 5.0.0. Bodhi still as some growing to do, and Linux Mint can get boring at times, but LM always gets stuff done.

 

Where do you want mintCast to go in the next 12 months?

We’re a bit short on ideas for new topics, and could use more community input on that subject. I know at times I’m very strained for time and may have to decide to leave, but people complain we have too many hosts now so that shouldn’t be an issue.

 

What are your must have applications for a fresh install?

  • SoftMaker Office
  • Firefox (if not included)
  • Audacity
  • Stacer
  • Discord & Telegram-Desktop
  • Printer (MFC-J291DW)
  • Mumble
  • Games
    • Kmines
    • kMahjongg
    • kNetwalk
    • Nethack (X11)
    • PySol FC

 

You guys don’t monetize where a lot of others do? Why is that?

I could really use the money but I don’t see myself as a professional podcaster. And the other guys don’t need the money. So unless I have a patron system for JUST ME and can justify that, we’re not going there.

 

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • <Jim from Raleigh>

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Interruptor-Espressobin-Sbud102-64-Bits-Sola-Red-Ordenador-De-a-Bordo-/273254237707 $66.95

 

https://espressobin.net/

 

  • <Benjamin Moser>

 

  • <Stan Reichardt>

Twit.TV web site, FLOSS Weekly.  FLOSS Weekly Guests spreadsheet lists Clement Lefebvre has agreed to a show – negotiating dates.

 

  • <Brad Alexander>

 

  • <Hilander>

 

  • <Curt Matz>

 

CHECK THIS OUT!

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

  • Leo announced an invitation to listeners to be included in the interviews

 

WRAP-UP:

           Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/

           Twitter @TonyH1212, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com 

 

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

  • Josh for working on redesigning our website, setting up the YouTube stream, and providing lots of technical help.
  • Bytemark hosting for providing the new hosting server for the website.
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files.
  • The folks at Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we use to communicate
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about. [Thanks Clem!]
]]> 3815 mintCast 314.5 – Moss Interview (for real) (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-314-moss-interview-for-real-mp3/ Wed, 07 Aug 2019 21:33:11 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3814 Download
]]> LINUX INNARDS:

How Did You Get Into Linux/mintCast 

(Questions by community member Oliver Kelly)

We’re roasting Moss today…

What got you into Linux?

I started playing with Linux in the early 2000s, I got Slackware and Red Hat disks but was too timid to look up all the information on all my cards. I finally got Mandrake to run, and it was fun but was not ready to replace all the things I did. Mandrake had a numerical upgrade, which would not work on my computer. Then I tried SuSE (just before OpenSUSE started), and it ran. But it was strictly niche at that point. My next-door neighbor played with things and eventually had two Windows boxes, a homemade Hackintosh, and a Fedora box, all networked; years later, he passed and bequeathed all those computers to me. When XP users were being pushed to 7, I moved to Ubuntu Gnome. When Ubuntu moved to Unity, that would not run on my computer, and I went back to Win7. I had some Win 8/8.1 computers but got over that, and went back to 7. Then when they tried to force me to Win 10, I tried it, saw all the open holes, found I couldn’t close all the security holes, went back to 7, and found most of the holes were left open. So I installed Linux Mint 17 and have not gone back. Linux has grown substantially in the last 15 years, and is now, in my opinion, a better system than Windows.

 

What do you love most about Linux?

Variety. Fragmentation, if you will. If you want to make something different, whether better or not, you can, or you can find large groups of people working on it.

 

What’s your current favorite distro?

Tie between Linux Mint 19.1 and Bodhi 5.0.0. Bodhi still as some growing to do, and Linux Mint can get boring at times, but LM always gets stuff done.

 

Where do you want mintCast to go in the next 12 months?

We’re a bit short on ideas for new topics, and could use more community input on that subject. I know at times I’m very strained for time and may have to decide to leave, but people complain we have too many hosts now so that shouldn’t be an issue.

 

What are your must have applications for a fresh install?

  • SoftMaker Office
  • Firefox (if not included)
  • Audacity
  • Stacer
  • Discord & Telegram-Desktop
  • Printer (MFC-J291DW)
  • Mumble
  • Games
    • Kmines
    • kMahjongg
    • kNetwalk
    • Nethack (X11)
    • PySol FC

 

You guys don’t monetize where a lot of others do? Why is that?

I could really use the money but I don’t see myself as a professional podcaster. And the other guys don’t need the money. So unless I have a patron system for JUST ME and can justify that, we’re not going there.

 

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • <Jim from Raleigh>

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Interruptor-Espressobin-Sbud102-64-Bits-Sola-Red-Ordenador-De-a-Bordo-/273254237707 $66.95

 

https://espressobin.net/

 

  • <Benjamin Moser>

 

  • <Stan Reichardt>

Twit.TV web site, FLOSS Weekly.  FLOSS Weekly Guests spreadsheet lists Clement Lefebvre has agreed to a show – negotiating dates.

 

  • <Brad Alexander>

 

  • <Hilander>

 

  • <Curt Matz>

 

CHECK THIS OUT!

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

  • Leo announced an invitation to listeners to be included in the interviews

 

WRAP-UP:

           Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/

           Twitter @TonyH1212, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com 

 

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

  • Josh for working on redesigning our website, setting up the YouTube stream, and providing lots of technical help.
  • Bytemark hosting for providing the new hosting server for the website.
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files.
  • The folks at Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we use to communicate
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about. [Thanks Clem!]
]]> 3814 mintCast 314 – Moss Interview https://mintcast.org/mintcast-314-moss-interview/ Wed, 31 Jul 2019 02:46:36 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3798 Download
]]>

Download

  • First up, in our Wanderings, I migrate my NAS to a much smaller case, Bo has been certifying, Moss is playing with a new laptop, Josh has also been playing around with a new laptop, and Joe guest hosts on Electric City Nerds!
  • Then, our news the Linux Mint 19.2 BETA is out, Epic Games gives an Epic grant, Ubuntu 18.10 is end of life and the Pinebook Pro is available for preorder.
  • In our, still kinda new, security section, we talk EvilGnome.
  • Leo
    • Decided against my Thermaltake Core X1 and went with a Node 304 to move my NAS guts to, but it turns out, using a full sized PSU isn’t going to work with my particular mini-itx motherboard. The SATA ports are angled to the side, and butt up right against the PSU leaving no room for the cables themselves.
    • I ordered a Corsair SF450 PSU. It’s modular which is great for airflow, as you might’ve guessed from the name, it’s small form factor which gives me the room I need for the SATA cables.
  • Bo
    • Certificate Exam Mayhem. 
      • Spent a month studying and missed my first attempt by 2 points.
      • Second attempt taken on Friday and I feel confident.
      • How Do you best study?
      • Do you study the test or the material?  
  • Moss
    • I’ve been playing with my new laptop, a Lenovo Ideapad 110acl-80TJ with all AMD chips (I did it for you, @TuxDigital). It isn’t quite as robust as my T430, but I needed a larger screen and full keyboard, and it was the price of a Pinebook. There have been a lot of revelations, and I think I’d do better blogging them or sharing them on the Discord group.
    • The biggest issue is the Realtek wifi modem, which, according to some distros, is broken and I need to load an open source driver for it; other distros just see it as broken and assume I have no wifi. But Linux Mint sees it, loads the driver, and it’s full speed ahead with the installation. 
    • I managed to get OpenMandriva Lx 4 to install fully, but it didn’t write the boot sector correctly so I lose all ability to boot. I’m trying to find a fix for that in their forum. Some users are saying I need to have Secure Boot enabled, others say disabled, but that does not appear to be the issue.
    • For now, I put KDE neon in to get some Plasma love.
    • The TV that I bought my wife as a belated birthday present, which would not be recognized as a VGA monitor except at 1024×768, required us to purchase MiniDisplayPort-to-HDMI adapters, and now we’re both on HD. It has made a clear difference in our TV viewing (on my 32” TV/monitor), although I wouldn’t have cared enough to buy the adapter if it weren’t for my wife’s issue (Amazon had a set of 2 adapter cables for not much more than the price of 1). Now I get to go try to install OpenMandriva Lx 4 again and see if the external monitor is not an issue.
    • Distrohoppers’ Digest will be recorded this Wednesday, i.e., the day after this episode should hit the podcatchers. It will be different, and, despite being longer since the previous episode, may feel rushed. See next point.
    • I’m still working full time. It hurts, but it pays OK. Some day in the future the other part-time person will be hired and start, but it’s not going to be this fortnite.
  • Josh
    • I got my new Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga. It’s a really nice machine!!
    • Favourite features:
    • 2K Screen 
    • 2in1 Format
    • Keyboard

Port Selection

    • I installed Deepin on my laptop which triggered BitLocker
    • My GPU failed on me this week. Random yellow and green dots and white overlay on games
    • My Phone (Pixel 3) also had to go back. I had to ship it to Poland but luckily they paid for all of that.
  • Joe
    • I have been boring
    • Listened to the spellsinger novels by Alan Dean Foster
      • But if you want to hear my opinion on it:
    • Guest spotted on ECN
      • Talked a lot of nerd
    • Had fun at the local lug
      • Discussing the difference between docker and virtualization
    • Went to Thursday night gaming
      • Played one night werewolf
        • Too complicated to explain
      • Played Pandemic
        • Also complex but a bit more fun
        • A lot like risk except you are trying to prevent things from taking over
    • Purchased several low cost 16gb micro sd cards so that I can work with my pi’s some more
    • Started moving some of the applications that I use to appimage and syncing it among my computers using btsync.
      • I only have to get the application once and then it is on all my computers
    • Went to Medieval Times with the wife and had a blast
    • Bought a set of messed up bluetooth headphones again
      • None of them were fixable.  
      • The Skullcandys were very glued together from the factory and by the time i got them apart they were not going to go back together
      • There was a set of Samsungs that I had some hope for mdr as600bt
        • They turned on and worked on one side
        • The side that did not work was closest to the controller board which is a little odd
        • Took apart and checked the connection, everything looked fine
          • It was a pain to take apart
        • Manually connected another earbud to the connections at both ends to verify the board and wire was good, it was
        • Desoldered the speaker.  
        • Took apart 3 other earbuds of differing sizes and types and tested out until i had one of a small enough size.  Very tiny delicate work
        • Had both sides working until I put it back together and the plastic started falling apart.  
        • Still got it put all together and was getting the glue to hold everything in place and did one more test.
        • The cables were now too short to be connected to the speaker and seated the right way on the board.
        • Hours of work wasted.
        • Considered pulling the controller board and battery to build something a bit more functional and said to heck with it.
        • Gave me nintendo thumbs.
  • Leo has questions! Josh about 2k (Do you scale or is it fine at 100%?). Joe about Docker (did you get anybody converted?). And about appimages (Where do you put them?)

THE NEWS:

  • Epic Games Backs Blender Foundation with $1.2m Epic MegaGrants
  • Linux Mint 19.2 beta is out!
    • Test out all of the new features we covered last episode! But, remember, a beta is a beta and may cause issues with your day-to-day stuff. Make sure you don’t mind a bug or two. Though most stuff I’ve seen on it from around the web is pretty positive.
  • Ubuntu 18.10 is EOL
    • Backup the important stuff
    • If you haven’t already gotten the message about upgrading
      • Run sudo do-release-upgrade -c to check
      • Run sudo do-release-upgrade to install
    • Or, for the GUI, in the Updates tab of the Software and Updates app, make sure the Notify option is set to “For any new version”. Close, and check for updates with the Software Updater app.
  • Pinebook Pro Available for Preorder
    • $199 for 1080p screen, Quad Core Cortex A53 CPU, Quad Core Mali T-860 GPU, 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC storage, but a free upgrade to 128GB available for Pine64 Community members.
    • They stress in the ordering information that they’re selling this unit at this price as a service to the community, and if you think a dead pixel or two will prompt you to request a refund or chargeback, don’t order it!
  • Windows’ WSL2 Gives Custom Kernel Choice
    • The highlight here is that, in addition to the LTS kernel WSL2 will ship with, you’ll also be able to add your own kernels!

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • EvilGnome
    • Comes to us via a shell script that makes calls to Makeself to unpack and install itself.
    • Makeself makes installations easier, but in this case, is a rung in the ladder of the exploit.
    • Once installed, the malware is installed in ~/.cache/gnome-software/gnome-shell-extensions/ and the files within are named things like gnome-shell-ext.sh
    • The functions inside the malware literally do what they say: takeSound(), takeScreenshot(), and scanFolder().
    • It does a few other things, like ShooterPing which pings a command and control server and ShooterKey which seems to be an unfinished keylogger.
    • My Mint installation doesn’t have a ~/.cache/gnome-software folder. If yours does, take a look inside.
]]> 3798 mintCast 314 – Moss Interview (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-314-moss-interview-mp3-2/ Wed, 31 Jul 2019 02:41:55 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3789 Download
]]>

Download

In this episode we discuss with Moss how he started with Mint

  • First up, in our Wanderings, I migrate my NAS to a much smaller case, Bo has been certifying, Moss is playing with a new laptop, Josh has also been playing around with a new laptop, and Joe guest hosts on Electric City Nerds!
  • Then, our news the Linux Mint 19.2 BETA is out, Epic Games gives an Epic grant, Ubuntu 18.10 is end of life and the Pinebook Pro is available for preorder.
  • In our, still kinda new, security section, we talk EvilGnome.
  • Leo
    • Decided against my Thermaltake Core X1 and went with a Node 304 to move my NAS guts to, but it turns out, using a full sized PSU isn’t going to work with my particular mini-itx motherboard. The SATA ports are angled to the side, and butt up right against the PSU leaving no room for the cables themselves.
    • I ordered a Corsair SF450 PSU. It’s modular which is great for airflow, as you might’ve guessed from the name, it’s small form factor which gives me the room I need for the SATA cables.
  • Bo
    • Certificate Exam Mayhem. 
      • Spent a month studying and missed my first attempt by 2 points.
      • Second attempt taken on Friday and I feel confident.
      • How Do you best study?
      • Do you study the test or the material?  
  • Moss
    • I’ve been playing with my new laptop, a Lenovo Ideapad 110acl-80TJ with all AMD chips (I did it for you, @TuxDigital). It isn’t quite as robust as my T430, but I needed a larger screen and full keyboard, and it was the price of a Pinebook. There have been a lot of revelations, and I think I’d do better blogging them or sharing them on the Discord group.
    • The biggest issue is the Realtek wifi modem, which, according to some distros, is broken and I need to load an open source driver for it; other distros just see it as broken and assume I have no wifi. But Linux Mint sees it, loads the driver, and it’s full speed ahead with the installation. 
    • I managed to get OpenMandriva Lx 4 to install fully, but it didn’t write the boot sector correctly so I lose all ability to boot. I’m trying to find a fix for that in their forum. Some users are saying I need to have Secure Boot enabled, others say disabled, but that does not appear to be the issue.
    • For now, I put KDE neon in to get some Plasma love.
    • The TV that I bought my wife as a belated birthday present, which would not be recognized as a VGA monitor except at 1024×768, required us to purchase MiniDisplayPort-to-HDMI adapters, and now we’re both on HD. It has made a clear difference in our TV viewing (on my 32” TV/monitor), although I wouldn’t have cared enough to buy the adapter if it weren’t for my wife’s issue (Amazon had a set of 2 adapter cables for not much more than the price of 1). Now I get to go try to install OpenMandriva Lx 4 again and see if the external monitor is not an issue.
    • Distrohoppers’ Digest will be recorded this Wednesday, i.e., the day after this episode should hit the podcatchers. It will be different, and, despite being longer since the previous episode, may feel rushed. See next point.
    • I’m still working full time. It hurts, but it pays OK. Some day in the future the other part-time person will be hired and start, but it’s not going to be this fortnite.
  • Josh
    • I got my new Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga. It’s a really nice machine!!
    • Favourite features:
    • 2K Screen 
    • 2in1 Format
    • Keyboard

Port Selection

    • I installed Deepin on my laptop which triggered BitLocker
    • My GPU failed on me this week. Random yellow and green dots and white overlay on games
    • My Phone (Pixel 3) also had to go back. I had to ship it to Poland but luckily they paid for all of that.
  • Joe
    • I have been boring
    • Listened to the spellsinger novels by Alan Dean Foster
      • But if you want to hear my opinion on it:
    • Guest spotted on ECN
      • Talked a lot of nerd
    • Had fun at the local lug
      • Discussing the difference between docker and virtualization
    • Went to Thursday night gaming
      • Played one night werewolf
        • Too complicated to explain
      • Played Pandemic
        • Also complex but a bit more fun
        • A lot like risk except you are trying to prevent things from taking over
    • Purchased several low cost 16gb micro sd cards so that I can work with my pi’s some more
    • Started moving some of the applications that I use to appimage and syncing it among my computers using btsync.
      • I only have to get the application once and then it is on all my computers
    • Went to Medieval Times with the wife and had a blast
    • Bought a set of messed up bluetooth headphones again
      • None of them were fixable.  
      • The Skullcandys were very glued together from the factory and by the time i got them apart they were not going to go back together
      • There was a set of Samsungs that I had some hope for mdr as600bt
        • They turned on and worked on one side
        • The side that did not work was closest to the controller board which is a little odd
        • Took apart and checked the connection, everything looked fine
          • It was a pain to take apart
        • Manually connected another earbud to the connections at both ends to verify the board and wire was good, it was
        • Desoldered the speaker.  
        • Took apart 3 other earbuds of differing sizes and types and tested out until i had one of a small enough size.  Very tiny delicate work
        • Had both sides working until I put it back together and the plastic started falling apart.  
        • Still got it put all together and was getting the glue to hold everything in place and did one more test.
        • The cables were now too short to be connected to the speaker and seated the right way on the board.
        • Hours of work wasted.
        • Considered pulling the controller board and battery to build something a bit more functional and said to heck with it.
        • Gave me nintendo thumbs.
  • Leo has questions! Josh about 2k (Do you scale or is it fine at 100%?). Joe about Docker (did you get anybody converted?). And about appimages (Where do you put them?)

THE NEWS:

  • Epic Games Backs Blender Foundation with $1.2m Epic MegaGrants
  • Linux Mint 19.2 beta is out!
    • Test out all of the new features we covered last episode! But, remember, a beta is a beta and may cause issues with your day-to-day stuff. Make sure you don’t mind a bug or two. Though most stuff I’ve seen on it from around the web is pretty positive.
  • Ubuntu 18.10 is EOL
    • Backup the important stuff
    • If you haven’t already gotten the message about upgrading
      • Run sudo do-release-upgrade -c to check
      • Run sudo do-release-upgrade to install
    • Or, for the GUI, in the Updates tab of the Software and Updates app, make sure the Notify option is set to “For any new version”. Close, and check for updates with the Software Updater app.
  • Pinebook Pro Available for Preorder
    • $199 for 1080p screen, Quad Core Cortex A53 CPU, Quad Core Mali T-860 GPU, 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC storage, but a free upgrade to 128GB available for Pine64 Community members.
    • They stress in the ordering information that they’re selling this unit at this price as a service to the community, and if you think a dead pixel or two will prompt you to request a refund or chargeback, don’t order it!
  • Windows’ WSL2 Gives Custom Kernel Choice
    • The highlight here is that, in addition to the LTS kernel WSL2 will ship with, you’ll also be able to add your own kernels!

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • EvilGnome
    • Comes to us via a shell script that makes calls to Makeself to unpack and install itself.
    • Makeself makes installations easier, but in this case, is a rung in the ladder of the exploit.
    • Once installed, the malware is installed in ~/.cache/gnome-software/gnome-shell-extensions/ and the files within are named things like gnome-shell-ext.sh
    • The functions inside the malware literally do what they say: takeSound(), takeScreenshot(), and scanFolder().
    • It does a few other things, like ShooterPing which pings a command and control server and ShooterKey which seems to be an unfinished keylogger.
    • My Mint installation doesn’t have a ~/.cache/gnome-software folder. If yours does, take a look inside.
]]> 3789 mintCast 313.5 – Desktop Environments https://mintcast.org/mintcast-313-5-desktop-environments/ Tue, 23 Jul 2019 16:55:24 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3771 Download
]]>

Download

In the second half of mintCast Episode 313 (313.5), Join Leo, Bo, Tony, Moss, Josh & Joe as we discuss our favourite desktop environments and why we use them, cover some listener feedback and talk about some cool stuff we think is worthy checking out.

LINUX INNARDS: 

DESKTOP ENVIRONMENTS:

  • What’s a Window Manager vs. What’s a DE?
  • Cinnamon
    • Joe
      • I enjoy the simplicity, very set it and forget it
      • I rarely see the desktop anyway
      • Good out of the box, looks very modern while having a familiar style
      • Has super key searching built in
      • Touch screen friendly after some tweaking
    • Bo
      • I hadn’t used Cinnamon in a long time as Mate is usually my default. I recently tried it again because we covered a story on the show that sparked my interest.
      • Uses Nemo file manager developed by Linux Mint
    • Leo
      • I’ve been a long time Cinnamon user. The fact that it works in Mint the way Plasma works in KDE Neon is one of the biggest reasons I like it. Every point release I’m surprised by how much better it gets.
    • Moss 
      • Debbie Downer here
      • Crashes too often; when I report that it crashes, I get attacked
      • Moving open programs to other workspaces is more difficult than in MATE or XFCE
    • Tony
      • Just to say that as I come from a background of older hardware use the extra RAM head space that Cinnamon uses has always kept me from using it. Maybe now I rarely suffer lack of resources I need to give it a longer term go 
  • MATE
    • Joe 
      • Doesn’t look as good out of the box as Cinnamon but still good
      • Better for lightweight systems and remote desktop
      • Used to use lxde/lxqt for lightweight but Mate has super key search built in and when i was using the others they did not
      • When i say built in i mean that i did not have to do any other work to get the search function working
    • Moss – This is my go-to DE. It works. It looks similar enough to Win7. There are a lot of quirks yet to Cinnamon and I’ve not had any issues with MATE. The rumor is that, when Gnome 3 came out and everyone hated it, MATE forked Gnome 2 in the best way, and has since converted to GTK3+ tools. Cinnamon took the new Gnome 3 and tried to fork it backwards to resemble Gnome 2. So MATE looks forward from a revered past, while Cinnamon looks backward from a convoluted future.
    • Tony – As Moss this is my goto DE, I have been using it since Ubuntu went all Unity and I moved to Mint as my Distro. It has all the tools I need and is compatible with gnome 3 software
    • Bo – Caja file manager, fork of Nautilus.
    • Leo – A good second fiddle to Cinnamon in Mint, and especially great in Ubuntu MATE, I’m always pushed away by the out-of-the-box experience I have. Screen tearing is a big issue for me on just about every display I’ve ever used! It’s a default compositor issue, I’ve found.
  • XFCE
    • Bo – XFCE used to be my default. It was light-weight and easily installed on many distros (My Archbang days). A vanilla install used to be very basic and ugly but was easily customizable. The Archbang forums was full people posting their configs and screenshots.
    • Leo – XFCE in Mint has started to beat out MATE for me, especially if I’m running it in a VM. Extremely lightweight and fully featured. Missing some features of Cinnamon, so I can’t stay long or use it as my daily driver!
    • Moss – It’s stiff and  ugly. You can modify it in a number of ways to make it less ugly, but it remains stiff. Taskbars can be made to run Top or Left, but in most configs you can’t get them Right or Bottom.
    • Tony – A bit pared down for me but great for older hardware if very limited resources, although only slightly better than MATE. 

 

  • KDE Plasma
    • Moss – Plasma is everything you dream about in a DE except they are still trying to make it work. They’ve been trying longer than any DE except Gnome. When they succeed, it’s a truly beautiful thing. They have dumped more than a few of their applications. If you want to see an update manager fail, run Discover… it fails a lot less than it did a year ago, but still…
    • Bo – KDE used to be a Linux Mint option. It uses Dolphin and has several “K” applications. Notably Kde Connect, Kdenlive, and Krita etc…
    • Leo – Plasma is my second favorite. It’s 99% perfect for me. My only real nitpick is that if you try to put anything in the middle of a task bar, anything added to the bar (i.e. app identifier icons) will move the clock over. This hurts my brain!
    • Tony – I know it was a long time ago, but I’m still feeling the fear of the KDE 4 fiasco 😉
  • Deepin
    • Josh – Deepin is by far the most user friendly desktop environment to use. It’s a great one for people who want something that is very like macOS but in a linux operating system. 
    • Super easy to install on Linux Mint and other Ubuntu based OSes
    • Deepin has its own OS for the best experience (Moss: Which would be great if (a) They would have a livedisc version and (b) it wasn’t strictly Debian (no PPAs))
  • Others (LXDE/LXQt, …)
    • Leo – LX* is great for extremely lightweight installs. Honestly, when hardware gets that old for me, I run things on it headless. So once it’s time to put LXDE or similar on it, I pass it up entirely!
  • Is Moksha a DE?
    • Moss – I’m probably the only one here using Moksha or any other version of Enlightenment. Honestly, it’s a Window Manager, but it does more than any other WM and gets really, really close to DE status. I wouldn’t be running Bodhi if it weren’t for Moksha. The Enlightenment people themselves are conflicted on its status.  But just like KDE, you don’t want to run the update manager, Eepdater. Maybe someday…

 

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • [to Moss] Todd <todrickhoho@gmail.com>

I am writing in about the comments made about Samba.  The Samba

configuration can get complicated.  Many of the settings are default so

they don’t even need to be mentioned in the config. Basically the

smb.conf file tells Samba what isn’t default.  Other then some specific

settings particular to your system of course.

 

I wanted to show a neat way how I use Samba in my home network. I have

Debian 9 setup with Plex Media Server.  If you are not familiar with

Plex.  Plex needs to be the owner of the media files and the directories

that contain them.

 

This is assumed that you have already followed the installation

instructions and created the user or users that will sign into Samba. 

When setting up the shares in Samba.  You can force the user and group

of a share.  What that does is when you save a file to that share.  It

will be saved as if that user and group saved the file themselves.  So

in my case.  I set the shares for Movies and TvShows to the plex user

and plex group.

 

Now from my desktop I can drag and drop movies and tvshows into the

appropriate share.  The files are owned by both plex user and plex

group.  Plex will see them automatically and import the meta data.

 

I will include my smb.conf file and my fstab from my desktop. This may

look like a lot of typing.  Just take it one step at a time.  Remember. 

Rome wasn’t built in one day.

 

If any of you have questions.  Just email me or send me a message to

@Dale_CDL in Telegram.

 

[global]

      workgroup = ASGARD

      server string = Plex Media Server

      netbios name = Baldr

      security = user

      server role = standalone server

      wins support = yes

      domain master = yes

      local master = yes

      preferred master = yes

      os level = 255

      map to guest = never

      name resolve order = host wins

 

[Movies]

      comment = Movies

      path = /plexmedia/movies

      force user = plex

      force group = plex

      create mask = 0660

      directory mask = 0770

      writable = yes

 

[TvShows]

      comment = TvShows

      path = /plexmedia/tvshows

      force user = plex

      force group = plex

      create mask = 0660

      directory mask = 0770

      writable = yes

 

force user and force group tells Samba what user and group to write the

files as.  create mask and directory mask tells Samba what user and

group permissions the files that are written have. When you install

Plex. The user and group plex is the default as far as I know.  You can

look at your /etc/passwd to see if it is listed.

 

Here is how you mount the shares when your computer boots.  It will send

a windows user name and password as if you were using a windows

computer.  This is user name on the server and the password you created

using the smbpasswd command.

 

Add this line to your fstab file.  Make sure it is all on one line. My

email client is wrapping my example to the next line.

 

//baldr/movies  /home/dale/baldr/movies/        cifs

uid=1000,gid=1000,vers=2.0,credentials=/home/dale/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8

0   0

 

In my example.  //baldr is my Plex Server and /movies is the name of the

share.  The next one is where I want it mounted.  I created a

baldr/movies directory in my /home/dale directory.  The next is what

file system to use and in this case it is cifs (which is what windows

uses).  The next is your users user id and group id.  To find that type

in a terminal.

 

cat /etc/passwd | grep username

 

where username is your username you used to login to your desktop.

 

The next is the version of windows file sharing.  A safe choice is

version 2.0 .

 

credentials is the file that contains your windows username and password

you used on Samba.  Make sure you set the .smbcredentials file to mode 600

 

chmod 600 .smbcredentials

 

That will make it so only your user can read or write to that file. 

That is help keep your username and password you used with Samba.

 

CHECK THIS OUT

  • Josh – We have a new website, it’s currently in BETA and it’s a huge upgrade from the 2011 theme we were using. Hosting is provided by Bytemark Hosting who are based in York, UK. We’d like to thank them for donating the server for the website upgrade. Any feedback you have on the new website, please do email mintcast@mintcast.org!

 

  • Tony H – If you watch YouTube videos and would like to watch them offline check out a command line utility called youtube-dl, Thanks to Joe Ressington for mentioning this on the Choose Linux podcast I installed it on the Debian install on the Toshiba and it works like a dream. There is a GUI version as well https://mrs0m30n3.github.io/youtube-dl-gui/ but the CLI version works well install instructions here:

https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html

How many times have I mentioned youtube-dl.  But the other Joe mentions it….

 

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Show Split

 

WRAP-UP:

           Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/

           Twitter @TonyH1212, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com 

 

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

  • Josh for working on redesigning our website, setting up the YouTube stream, and providing lots of technical help.
  • Bytemark hosting for providing the new hosting server for the website.
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files.
  • The folks at Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we use to communicate
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about. [Thanks Clem!]
]]> 3771 mintCast 313.5 – Desktop Environments (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-313-5-desktop-environments-mp3/ Tue, 23 Jul 2019 16:55:08 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3769 Download
]]>

Download

In the second half of mintCast Episode 313 (313.5), Join Leo, Bo, Tony, Moss, Josh & Joe as we discuss our favourite desktop environments and why we use them, cover some listener feedback and talk about some cool stuff we think is worthy checking out.

LINUX INNARDS: 

DESKTOP ENVIRONMENTS:

  • What’s a Window Manager vs. What’s a DE?
  • Cinnamon
    • Joe
      • I enjoy the simplicity, very set it and forget it
      • I rarely see the desktop anyway
      • Good out of the box, looks very modern while having a familiar style
      • Has super key searching built in
      • Touch screen friendly after some tweaking
    • Bo
      • I hadn’t used Cinnamon in a long time as Mate is usually my default. I recently tried it again because we covered a story on the show that sparked my interest.
      • Uses Nemo file manager developed by Linux Mint
    • Leo
      • I’ve been a long time Cinnamon user. The fact that it works in Mint the way Plasma works in KDE Neon is one of the biggest reasons I like it. Every point release I’m surprised by how much better it gets.
    • Moss 
      • Debbie Downer here
      • Crashes too often; when I report that it crashes, I get attacked
      • Moving open programs to other workspaces is more difficult than in MATE or XFCE
    • Tony
      • Just to say that as I come from a background of older hardware use the extra RAM head space that Cinnamon uses has always kept me from using it. Maybe now I rarely suffer lack of resources I need to give it a longer term go 
  • MATE
    • Joe 
      • Doesn’t look as good out of the box as Cinnamon but still good
      • Better for lightweight systems and remote desktop
      • Used to use lxde/lxqt for lightweight but Mate has super key search built in and when i was using the others they did not
      • When i say built in i mean that i did not have to do any other work to get the search function working
    • Moss – This is my go-to DE. It works. It looks similar enough to Win7. There are a lot of quirks yet to Cinnamon and I’ve not had any issues with MATE. The rumor is that, when Gnome 3 came out and everyone hated it, MATE forked Gnome 2 in the best way, and has since converted to GTK3+ tools. Cinnamon took the new Gnome 3 and tried to fork it backwards to resemble Gnome 2. So MATE looks forward from a revered past, while Cinnamon looks backward from a convoluted future.
    • Tony – As Moss this is my goto DE, I have been using it since Ubuntu went all Unity and I moved to Mint as my Distro. It has all the tools I need and is compatible with gnome 3 software
    • Bo – Caja file manager, fork of Nautilus.
    • Leo – A good second fiddle to Cinnamon in Mint, and especially great in Ubuntu MATE, I’m always pushed away by the out-of-the-box experience I have. Screen tearing is a big issue for me on just about every display I’ve ever used! It’s a default compositor issue, I’ve found.
  • XFCE
    • Bo – XFCE used to be my default. It was light-weight and easily installed on many distros (My Archbang days). A vanilla install used to be very basic and ugly but was easily customizable. The Archbang forums was full people posting their configs and screenshots.
    • Leo – XFCE in Mint has started to beat out MATE for me, especially if I’m running it in a VM. Extremely lightweight and fully featured. Missing some features of Cinnamon, so I can’t stay long or use it as my daily driver!
    • Moss – It’s stiff and  ugly. You can modify it in a number of ways to make it less ugly, but it remains stiff. Taskbars can be made to run Top or Left, but in most configs you can’t get them Right or Bottom.
    • Tony – A bit pared down for me but great for older hardware if very limited resources, although only slightly better than MATE. 

 

  • KDE Plasma
    • Moss – Plasma is everything you dream about in a DE except they are still trying to make it work. They’ve been trying longer than any DE except Gnome. When they succeed, it’s a truly beautiful thing. They have dumped more than a few of their applications. If you want to see an update manager fail, run Discover… it fails a lot less than it did a year ago, but still…
    • Bo – KDE used to be a Linux Mint option. It uses Dolphin and has several “K” applications. Notably Kde Connect, Kdenlive, and Krita etc…
    • Leo – Plasma is my second favorite. It’s 99% perfect for me. My only real nitpick is that if you try to put anything in the middle of a task bar, anything added to the bar (i.e. app identifier icons) will move the clock over. This hurts my brain!
    • Tony – I know it was a long time ago, but I’m still feeling the fear of the KDE 4 fiasco 😉
  • Deepin
    • Josh – Deepin is by far the most user friendly desktop environment to use. It’s a great one for people who want something that is very like macOS but in a linux operating system. 
    • Super easy to install on Linux Mint and other Ubuntu based OSes
    • Deepin has its own OS for the best experience (Moss: Which would be great if (a) They would have a livedisc version and (b) it wasn’t strictly Debian (no PPAs))
  • Others (LXDE/LXQt, …)
    • Leo – LX* is great for extremely lightweight installs. Honestly, when hardware gets that old for me, I run things on it headless. So once it’s time to put LXDE or similar on it, I pass it up entirely!
  • Is Moksha a DE?
    • Moss – I’m probably the only one here using Moksha or any other version of Enlightenment. Honestly, it’s a Window Manager, but it does more than any other WM and gets really, really close to DE status. I wouldn’t be running Bodhi if it weren’t for Moksha. The Enlightenment people themselves are conflicted on its status.  But just like KDE, you don’t want to run the update manager, Eepdater. Maybe someday…

 

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • [to Moss] Todd <todrickhoho@gmail.com>

I am writing in about the comments made about Samba.  The Samba

configuration can get complicated.  Many of the settings are default so

they don’t even need to be mentioned in the config. Basically the

smb.conf file tells Samba what isn’t default.  Other then some specific

settings particular to your system of course.

 

I wanted to show a neat way how I use Samba in my home network. I have

Debian 9 setup with Plex Media Server.  If you are not familiar with

Plex.  Plex needs to be the owner of the media files and the directories

that contain them.

 

This is assumed that you have already followed the installation

instructions and created the user or users that will sign into Samba. 

When setting up the shares in Samba.  You can force the user and group

of a share.  What that does is when you save a file to that share.  It

will be saved as if that user and group saved the file themselves.  So

in my case.  I set the shares for Movies and TvShows to the plex user

and plex group.

 

Now from my desktop I can drag and drop movies and tvshows into the

appropriate share.  The files are owned by both plex user and plex

group.  Plex will see them automatically and import the meta data.

 

I will include my smb.conf file and my fstab from my desktop. This may

look like a lot of typing.  Just take it one step at a time.  Remember. 

Rome wasn’t built in one day.

 

If any of you have questions.  Just email me or send me a message to

@Dale_CDL in Telegram.

 

[global]

      workgroup = ASGARD

      server string = Plex Media Server

      netbios name = Baldr

      security = user

      server role = standalone server

      wins support = yes

      domain master = yes

      local master = yes

      preferred master = yes

      os level = 255

      map to guest = never

      name resolve order = host wins

 

[Movies]

      comment = Movies

      path = /plexmedia/movies

      force user = plex

      force group = plex

      create mask = 0660

      directory mask = 0770

      writable = yes

 

[TvShows]

      comment = TvShows

      path = /plexmedia/tvshows

      force user = plex

      force group = plex

      create mask = 0660

      directory mask = 0770

      writable = yes

 

force user and force group tells Samba what user and group to write the

files as.  create mask and directory mask tells Samba what user and

group permissions the files that are written have. When you install

Plex. The user and group plex is the default as far as I know.  You can

look at your /etc/passwd to see if it is listed.

 

Here is how you mount the shares when your computer boots.  It will send

a windows user name and password as if you were using a windows

computer.  This is user name on the server and the password you created

using the smbpasswd command.

 

Add this line to your fstab file.  Make sure it is all on one line. My

email client is wrapping my example to the next line.

 

//baldr/movies  /home/dale/baldr/movies/        cifs

uid=1000,gid=1000,vers=2.0,credentials=/home/dale/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8

0   0

 

In my example.  //baldr is my Plex Server and /movies is the name of the

share.  The next one is where I want it mounted.  I created a

baldr/movies directory in my /home/dale directory.  The next is what

file system to use and in this case it is cifs (which is what windows

uses).  The next is your users user id and group id.  To find that type

in a terminal.

 

cat /etc/passwd | grep username

 

where username is your username you used to login to your desktop.

 

The next is the version of windows file sharing.  A safe choice is

version 2.0 .

 

credentials is the file that contains your windows username and password

you used on Samba.  Make sure you set the .smbcredentials file to mode 600

 

chmod 600 .smbcredentials

 

That will make it so only your user can read or write to that file. 

That is help keep your username and password you used with Samba.

 

CHECK THIS OUT

  • Josh – We have a new website, it’s currently in BETA and it’s a huge upgrade from the 2011 theme we were using. Hosting is provided by Bytemark Hosting who are based in York, UK. We’d like to thank them for donating the server for the website upgrade. Any feedback you have on the new website, please do email mintcast@mintcast.org!

 

  • Tony H – If you watch YouTube videos and would like to watch them offline check out a command line utility called youtube-dl, Thanks to Joe Ressington for mentioning this on the Choose Linux podcast I installed it on the Debian install on the Toshiba and it works like a dream. There is a GUI version as well https://mrs0m30n3.github.io/youtube-dl-gui/ but the CLI version works well install instructions here:

https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/download.html

How many times have I mentioned youtube-dl.  But the other Joe mentions it….

 

 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Show Split

 

WRAP-UP:

           Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/

           Twitter @TonyH1212, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com 

 

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

  • Josh for working on redesigning our website, setting up the YouTube stream, and providing lots of technical help.
  • Bytemark hosting for providing the new hosting server for the website.
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files.
  • The folks at Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we use to communicate
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about. [Thanks Clem!]
]]> 3769 mintCast 313 – A New Leaf https://mintcast.org/mintcast-313-a-new-leaf/ Wed, 17 Jul 2019 05:29:36 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3744 Download
]]>

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  • First up, in our Wanderings, I do security training, Bo trains in France, Tony goes on vacation and hugs his VPN tightly, Moss tries out OpenMandriva with more success this time, Josh replaces his PC with the new Raspberry Pi 4, and Joe reads more and considers creating a podcast;
  • In our ALL NEW security section, we talk about DNS over HTTPS;
  • Then, in our news, Linux Mint is beta testing the 19.2 updates, Ubuntu considers ZFS, some Raspberry Pi successes and flaws, and more.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • Security Training all last week
    • Bo
      • Going to France for training
    • Tony H
      • Well I’ve been away for 2 weeks vacation and got back last Sunday, Had a wonderful time traveling to Iceland, and Visiting the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland.
      • While I was away I found that I couldn’t access any of the content hosted on Archive.org It turns out my 4G mobile ISP blocks archive.org as Adult content so after finding this out I was able to resolve this issue by installing a free VPN called Proxy Master and now when I’m using my 4G data allowance I am able to access any podcasts hosted on and the archive.org website.
      • Since I got back I have installed Debian 10 (Buster) onto my Toshiba Z30 for testing out as my Distrohoppers OS for this month. So far I’m liking what I see and as this will eventually form the base of LMDE 4 this is looking positive for the future Mint release.
      • And finally I have received my Raspberry Pi4 and this section of the show notes were written on the Pi via Google Drive. I’ve not tested it comprehensively as at the time of the show I’ve only had it just over 3 days but I am so far i’m impressed, Yes it was definitely the right thing to get a heat sink, and if using for very CPU heavy processes you will need a heat sink with a fan, a fan shim from Pimoroni is a fairly cheap solution to the problem of cooling on the Pi4. But for a light use case such as a cheap homework PC or a kitchen PC for looking up recipes on the net, streaming music, or having a TV show on in the background while your cooking this is a fantastic device. Yes you will have to factor in the cost of the peripherals and micro SD card but even the 4Gb model could be set up for less than $100/£100 mark assuming you have a HDMI monitor/TV spare. One point to note is if you plan to use it on WiFi then you will need to be close to your WiFi router or a repeater, as the WiFi card struggles to find a weak signal.
    • Moss
      • I installed OpenMandriva Lx 4, with a very tiny level of success — when I set displays to use my external monitor, it freezes up. I have reported the bug to the OM4 team. I also reported a bug to the Calamares team, for one which displayed in both installs of OM4 and Feren OS.
      • I attempted to load OpenSUSE 15.1 Leap as a live disk, but it just wanted to install. I looked at the installer, and it tried to do some things I didn’t want it to, and offered some issues I didn’t even get, so I aborted. It might be easy to install on a computer by itself, but without evaluating it a lot more, I don’t recommend it.
      • Tony Hughes and I are going “experimental” in this month’s Distrohoppers’ Digest — instead of just encapsulating our ratings and presenting the review as such, we will be talking our way through each step, including successes and frustrations, we took during installation. My review is on the current Feren OS version, which just got an update on July 13.
      • Speaking of which, after a lot of issues (some related to the Calamares bug), I reinstalled Feren OS, with a lot of help from the developer. I’m still curious as to whether it is a distinct distro, as it takes Linux Mint Cinnamon and mostly just adds a lot of theming stuff, but if it weren’t distinct from Linux Mint, I would not have had so many problems getting this far. And I’ve been beating my head repeatedly against any available wall in using the theming in this distro — whereas a few years ago, it only took a simple pair of mouse clicks to change the theme. (Feren OS Next uses Plasma 5… have to check that out.)
      • I helped a co-worker who was trying to edit her resume — it looked good on her phone, but WordPad totally messed it up visually. I helped her install SoftMaker FreeOffice 2018, and everything was fine. I was amazed at how good Windows 10 has gotten at hiding essential things from users, such as how to reassign file types to programs.
      • I got a VGA cable to attach my wife’s new Hitachi 26” TV to her T430. The specs for the TV are amazing and the price was right, but the PC doesn’t recognize it beyond 1024×768, leaving me to wonder whether her PC needs a BIOS update. I’ve spent some time getting advice on how to fix it, but nothing has worked yet. We just bought adapters so we can use HDMI cables, *should* fix the issue, arriving Wednesday.
      • I have managed to sell (or rather, give away with a small exchange of money) some of my old computer equipment. I only attempted to boot one of them, and it did not turn on, but I sold that one with its killer video cards and two others, all seemingly non-working, and threw in a bunch of other stuff. So this kid plugs in the first two computers and they booted fine, including my old Dell which stopped booting almost 4 years ago. I would like to say I am not crying a lot about essentially giving away hundreds of dollars of equipment just because it didn’t work for me, but that would not be true. I am using the money to buy a Lenovo IdeaPad 110 with an AMD A6 chip for the price of a new Pinebook, and our listener Jackie Moore donated what I needed to get over the top without being asked. I still have two old computers left, the Linux box and the Hackintosh (in identical boxes), and now that I know the stuff works I’m not going to let them go so cheaply.
      • We received a couple support letters for my wife’s immigration case. Still have a lot of work to do. And my health insurance just canceled my ability to use the local health clinic and assigned me to one 24 miles away, despite the fact that there is a clinic in the same system walking distance from me. I think I’m changing insurance providers. And no matter how hard you try, you won’t get me to talk about cat litter.
    • Josh
      • I recorded my first impressions video of the pi-top [4] which is a cool portable pi solution now on kickstarter. Watch my video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz23Uifwp_8
      • Won 2 awards at J.P.Morgan – Arm Young Coder of the Year & Student of the year. I won a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga!
      • PI 4 CHALLENGE
        • I ordered a Pi 4 20 minutes after release, I’m impatient.
        • I had the mad idea of replacing my PC for a week with the Pi 4
          • SoC: Broadcom BCM2711B0 quad-core A72 (ARMv8-A) 64-bit @ 1.5GHz
          • GPU: Broadcom VideoCore VI
          • Networking: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz 802.11b/g/n/ac wireless LAN
          • RAM: 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB LPDDR4 SDRAM
          • Bluetooth: Bluetooth 5.0, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
          • GPIO: 40-pin GPIO header, populated
          • Storage: microSD
          • Ports: 2 × micro-HDMI 2.0, 3.5 mm analogue audio-video jack, 2 × USB 2.0, 2 × USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, Camera Serial Interface (CSI), Display Serial Interface (DSI) USB C!!!!!
        • The software uses buster, it’s buggy
        • Some packages don’t work
        • It’s much faster than the 3B+ and other models
        • The ram is a welcome addition
        • USB 3 is really fast
        • Dual Displays are really nice
        • It’s super usable as an entry level PC
        • For me, i only managed 4 days as I needed windows
        • The specs are more comparable to a mobile than the claimed desktop
        • More work to do on software to catch up to the hardware
  • Cooling is needed!!!
      • Arctic USB fan cooled it by 20ish degrees
  • Joe
    • Re-reading the Dragon Knight series
      • Read it as a kid and really enjoyed it
      • The audiobook is very well done
      • Highly recommend
    • Also reading the Amber Cycle
      • Book series is ok
      • Do not recommend the audiobooks.  The quality is low and the books are convoluted enough to be hard to follow
      • I will see if I can find the hard copies and give it another run through to compare
      • [Moss – I’m a big Roger Zelazny fan, and Amber is by far his worst work (although easily his most commercially successful). He had 3 Hugos and a Nebula and no money…so he wrote Amber. And no, I don’t need to say any of this out loud.]
    • Thinking about starting a section for audio listening or spinning off another podcast for audiobooks/dramas/podcasts that I would recommend for others
    • Debating what new phones the wife and i should get
      • S10
      • Oneplus
      • Wait for the new Note
      • [Moss: Why not an X4?]
    • Enjoying the new Swamp Thing DC streaming is doing really well with the shows that they are making.
    • Got an Echo Input while they were on sale to test out with some bluetooth speaker
      • Have plans for a project that the wife asked for
      • Take an old clock and replace the face with the input and hang it over the top of the bed
      • Have the clock and need to figure out the rest

THE NEWS:

  • Linux Mint June Monthly News
    • Pinning Items in Nemo means your most used files or folders can be listed at the top of the window
    • Conditional menus allow users to script their own actions. Some of the examples used in the blog is “Set as Wallpaper” and “Convert DTS Audio to AC3.” There really aren’t any restrictions on what can be achieved here.
    • The Cinnamon Menu will now make it apparent what version of the generally named apps you’re running. Before, you might see two Text Editors. Now, you’ll see exactly which one you’re launching added. Also, if you have the Flatpak version of the app installed, the menu will now make it apparent whether you’re running the version from the repository or the Flatpak.
    • Scrollbar settings now allow users to hide it altogether right from the menu
    • Xapps
    • Mintbox 3’s will be beefy.
    • Snap – Clem seems to be a bit worried about snap cornering the market, but not the snap technology itself. He uses the example of Spotify in the blog and wonders aloud what would happen if Spotify drops .deb support. Fedora is already in this predicament since they don’t ship snapd either and there is no RPM option. They’re forced to use snap, or not use Spotify. Clem goes on to wonder what might happen if Canonical walls off snap and requires an Ubuntu One account. From this perspective, Flatpak is the most open option. Opinions?
      • This is something that has some urgency behind it because, like Fedora and Spotify, we’ll be affected too. Chromium installations from the repository might well change to a simple link pointing to snapd. So, if you want Chromium, but don’t want snapd, you’re out of luck on Linux Mint.
    • Dropping 32-bit support starting with Linux Mint 20. 32-bit holdouts can continue using Linux Mint 19 until 2023. (Leo opinion) This was inevitable and is ultimately a good thing!
    • New Slack Channel for the Media has been created. (Leo’s cynical opinion) Hopefully this will combat some of the clickbait articles, though if it generates money, the more unscrupulous writers will forge ahead without regard for the truth.

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • DNS over HTTPS
    • What is it?
      • A way to encrypt your DNS requests.
      • As it stands, any DNS request (read: ALL OF THEM) you send is sent in cleartext. No encryption, no obfuscation. Your ISP and anybody else that can listen to your communications, malicious or not, can see where you go and when.
    • Who should use it?
      • Firefox Users LOL
      • (Leo’s opinion) Everyone. I’m a privacy hawk. Agreed
    • How does it work?
      • Under preferences in Firefox, hit the — menu -> Preferences -> Enable DNS over HTTPS
      • When you make queries in Firefox (i.e. go to google.com or instagram.com) it bypasses any DNS server that you’ve set on the host machine and sends them to the server you specify, or if you don’t specify one, it uses Cloudflare’s solution.
]]> 3744 mintCast 313 – A New Leaf (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-313-a-new-leaf-mp3/ Wed, 17 Jul 2019 05:29:25 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3743 Download
]]>

Download

  • First up, in our Wanderings, I do security training, Bo trains in France, Tony goes on vacation and hugs his VPN tightly, Moss tries out OpenMandriva with more success this time, Josh replaces his PC with the new Raspberry Pi 4, and Joe reads more and considers creating a podcast;
  • In our ALL NEW security section, we talk about DNS over HTTPS;
  • Then, in our news, Linux Mint is beta testing the 19.2 updates, Ubuntu considers ZFS, some Raspberry Pi successes and flaws, and more.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • Security Training all last week
    • Bo
      • Going to France for training
    • Tony H
      • Well I’ve been away for 2 weeks vacation and got back last Sunday, Had a wonderful time traveling to Iceland, and Visiting the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland.
      • While I was away I found that I couldn’t access any of the content hosted on Archive.org It turns out my 4G mobile ISP blocks archive.org as Adult content so after finding this out I was able to resolve this issue by installing a free VPN called Proxy Master and now when I’m using my 4G data allowance I am able to access any podcasts hosted on and the archive.org website.
      • Since I got back I have installed Debian 10 (Buster) onto my Toshiba Z30 for testing out as my Distrohoppers OS for this month. So far I’m liking what I see and as this will eventually form the base of LMDE 4 this is looking positive for the future Mint release.
      • And finally I have received my Raspberry Pi4 and this section of the show notes were written on the Pi via Google Drive. I’ve not tested it comprehensively as at the time of the show I’ve only had it just over 3 days but I am so far i’m impressed, Yes it was definitely the right thing to get a heat sink, and if using for very CPU heavy processes you will need a heat sink with a fan, a fan shim from Pimoroni is a fairly cheap solution to the problem of cooling on the Pi4. But for a light use case such as a cheap homework PC or a kitchen PC for looking up recipes on the net, streaming music, or having a TV show on in the background while your cooking this is a fantastic device. Yes you will have to factor in the cost of the peripherals and micro SD card but even the 4Gb model could be set up for less than $100/£100 mark assuming you have a HDMI monitor/TV spare. One point to note is if you plan to use it on WiFi then you will need to be close to your WiFi router or a repeater, as the WiFi card struggles to find a weak signal.
    • Moss
      • I installed OpenMandriva Lx 4, with a very tiny level of success — when I set displays to use my external monitor, it freezes up. I have reported the bug to the OM4 team. I also reported a bug to the Calamares team, for one which displayed in both installs of OM4 and Feren OS.
      • I attempted to load OpenSUSE 15.1 Leap as a live disk, but it just wanted to install. I looked at the installer, and it tried to do some things I didn’t want it to, and offered some issues I didn’t even get, so I aborted. It might be easy to install on a computer by itself, but without evaluating it a lot more, I don’t recommend it.
      • Tony Hughes and I are going “experimental” in this month’s Distrohoppers’ Digest — instead of just encapsulating our ratings and presenting the review as such, we will be talking our way through each step, including successes and frustrations, we took during installation. My review is on the current Feren OS version, which just got an update on July 13.
      • Speaking of which, after a lot of issues (some related to the Calamares bug), I reinstalled Feren OS, with a lot of help from the developer. I’m still curious as to whether it is a distinct distro, as it takes Linux Mint Cinnamon and mostly just adds a lot of theming stuff, but if it weren’t distinct from Linux Mint, I would not have had so many problems getting this far. And I’ve been beating my head repeatedly against any available wall in using the theming in this distro — whereas a few years ago, it only took a simple pair of mouse clicks to change the theme. (Feren OS Next uses Plasma 5… have to check that out.)
      • I helped a co-worker who was trying to edit her resume — it looked good on her phone, but WordPad totally messed it up visually. I helped her install SoftMaker FreeOffice 2018, and everything was fine. I was amazed at how good Windows 10 has gotten at hiding essential things from users, such as how to reassign file types to programs.
      • I got a VGA cable to attach my wife’s new Hitachi 26” TV to her T430. The specs for the TV are amazing and the price was right, but the PC doesn’t recognize it beyond 1024×768, leaving me to wonder whether her PC needs a BIOS update. I’ve spent some time getting advice on how to fix it, but nothing has worked yet. We just bought adapters so we can use HDMI cables, *should* fix the issue, arriving Wednesday.
      • I have managed to sell (or rather, give away with a small exchange of money) some of my old computer equipment. I only attempted to boot one of them, and it did not turn on, but I sold that one with its killer video cards and two others, all seemingly non-working, and threw in a bunch of other stuff. So this kid plugs in the first two computers and they booted fine, including my old Dell which stopped booting almost 4 years ago. I would like to say I am not crying a lot about essentially giving away hundreds of dollars of equipment just because it didn’t work for me, but that would not be true. I am using the money to buy a Lenovo IdeaPad 110 with an AMD A6 chip for the price of a new Pinebook, and our listener Jackie Moore donated what I needed to get over the top without being asked. I still have two old computers left, the Linux box and the Hackintosh (in identical boxes), and now that I know the stuff works I’m not going to let them go so cheaply.
      • We received a couple support letters for my wife’s immigration case. Still have a lot of work to do. And my health insurance just canceled my ability to use the local health clinic and assigned me to one 24 miles away, despite the fact that there is a clinic in the same system walking distance from me. I think I’m changing insurance providers. And no matter how hard you try, you won’t get me to talk about cat litter.
    • Josh
      • I recorded my first impressions video of the pi-top [4] which is a cool portable pi solution now on kickstarter. Watch my video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz23Uifwp_8
      • Won 2 awards at J.P.Morgan – Arm Young Coder of the Year & Student of the year. I won a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga!
      • PI 4 CHALLENGE
        • I ordered a Pi 4 20 minutes after release, I’m impatient.
        • I had the mad idea of replacing my PC for a week with the Pi 4
          • SoC: Broadcom BCM2711B0 quad-core A72 (ARMv8-A) 64-bit @ 1.5GHz
          • GPU: Broadcom VideoCore VI
          • Networking: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz 802.11b/g/n/ac wireless LAN
          • RAM: 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB LPDDR4 SDRAM
          • Bluetooth: Bluetooth 5.0, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
          • GPIO: 40-pin GPIO header, populated
          • Storage: microSD
          • Ports: 2 × micro-HDMI 2.0, 3.5 mm analogue audio-video jack, 2 × USB 2.0, 2 × USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, Camera Serial Interface (CSI), Display Serial Interface (DSI) USB C!!!!!
        • The software uses buster, it’s buggy
        • Some packages don’t work
        • It’s much faster than the 3B+ and other models
        • The ram is a welcome addition
        • USB 3 is really fast
        • Dual Displays are really nice
        • It’s super usable as an entry level PC
        • For me, i only managed 4 days as I needed windows
        • The specs are more comparable to a mobile than the claimed desktop
        • More work to do on software to catch up to the hardware
  • Cooling is needed!!!
      • Arctic USB fan cooled it by 20ish degrees
  • Joe
    • Re-reading the Dragon Knight series
      • Read it as a kid and really enjoyed it
      • The audiobook is very well done
      • Highly recommend
    • Also reading the Amber Cycle
      • Book series is ok
      • Do not recommend the audiobooks.  The quality is low and the books are convoluted enough to be hard to follow
      • I will see if I can find the hard copies and give it another run through to compare
      • [Moss – I’m a big Roger Zelazny fan, and Amber is by far his worst work (although easily his most commercially successful). He had 3 Hugos and a Nebula and no money…so he wrote Amber. And no, I don’t need to say any of this out loud.]
    • Thinking about starting a section for audio listening or spinning off another podcast for audiobooks/dramas/podcasts that I would recommend for others
    • Debating what new phones the wife and i should get
      • S10
      • Oneplus
      • Wait for the new Note
      • [Moss: Why not an X4?]
    • Enjoying the new Swamp Thing DC streaming is doing really well with the shows that they are making.
    • Got an Echo Input while they were on sale to test out with some bluetooth speaker
      • Have plans for a project that the wife asked for
      • Take an old clock and replace the face with the input and hang it over the top of the bed
      • Have the clock and need to figure out the rest

THE NEWS:

  • Linux Mint June Monthly News
    • Pinning Items in Nemo means your most used files or folders can be listed at the top of the window
    • Conditional menus allow users to script their own actions. Some of the examples used in the blog is “Set as Wallpaper” and “Convert DTS Audio to AC3.” There really aren’t any restrictions on what can be achieved here.
    • The Cinnamon Menu will now make it apparent what version of the generally named apps you’re running. Before, you might see two Text Editors. Now, you’ll see exactly which one you’re launching added. Also, if you have the Flatpak version of the app installed, the menu will now make it apparent whether you’re running the version from the repository or the Flatpak.
    • Scrollbar settings now allow users to hide it altogether right from the menu
    • Xapps
    • Mintbox 3’s will be beefy.
    • Snap – Clem seems to be a bit worried about snap cornering the market, but not the snap technology itself. He uses the example of Spotify in the blog and wonders aloud what would happen if Spotify drops .deb support. Fedora is already in this predicament since they don’t ship snapd either and there is no RPM option. They’re forced to use snap, or not use Spotify. Clem goes on to wonder what might happen if Canonical walls off snap and requires an Ubuntu One account. From this perspective, Flatpak is the most open option. Opinions?
      • This is something that has some urgency behind it because, like Fedora and Spotify, we’ll be affected too. Chromium installations from the repository might well change to a simple link pointing to snapd. So, if you want Chromium, but don’t want snapd, you’re out of luck on Linux Mint.
    • Dropping 32-bit support starting with Linux Mint 20. 32-bit holdouts can continue using Linux Mint 19 until 2023. (Leo opinion) This was inevitable and is ultimately a good thing!
    • New Slack Channel for the Media has been created. (Leo’s cynical opinion) Hopefully this will combat some of the clickbait articles, though if it generates money, the more unscrupulous writers will forge ahead without regard for the truth.

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • DNS over HTTPS
    • What is it?
      • A way to encrypt your DNS requests.
      • As it stands, any DNS request (read: ALL OF THEM) you send is sent in cleartext. No encryption, no obfuscation. Your ISP and anybody else that can listen to your communications, malicious or not, can see where you go and when.
    • Who should use it?
      • Firefox Users LOL
      • (Leo’s opinion) Everyone. I’m a privacy hawk.
    • How does it work?
      • Under preferences in Firefox, hit the — menu -> Preferences -> Enable DNS over HTTPS
      • When you make queries in Firefox (i.e. go to google.com or instagram.com) it bypasses any DNS server that you’ve set on the host machine and sends them to the server you specify, or if you don’t specify one, it uses Cloudflare’s solution.
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