Brave – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Fri, 10 Jul 2026 06:56:51 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Brave – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false episodic CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast Brave – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 489 – You’ll Own Nothing, And Like It! https://mintcast.org/489-youll-own-nothing-and-like-it/ Wed, 08 Jul 2026 18:05:10 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=8093 · First up in the news: PlayStation and Microsoft goes fully digital, Amazon blames piracy, Brave goes “containerized”, and Immich has “Big Upgrades.”

· Then in our Wanderings: Joe does more with the mini rack and plans ahead, Jim drops Fire TV like a hot potato,

· In Check this Out: Myna lets you talk instead of type in Ubuntu

]]> · First up in the news: PlayStation and Microsoft goes fully digital, Amazon blames piracy, Brave goes “containerized”, and Immich has “Big Upgrades.”

· Then in our Wanderings: Joe does more with the mini rack and plans ahead, Jim drops Fire TV like a hot potato,

· In Check this Out: Myna lets you talk instead of type in Ubuntu

Link To Full Show Notes

The News:

What PlayStation going fully digital tells us about the PS6

Microsoft’s Next-Gen Xbox Could Be Digital-Only With New Disc-to-Digital Support

Amazon Blames Piracy Apps With Malware For Killing New Fire Stick Sideloading

Brave Says This is Not a Privacy Feature, But Using Containers Has Its Perks

Immich 3.0 Released with Big Upgrades for Self-Hosted Photo Libraries

Check This Out:

Ubuntu’s new ‘Myna’ AI lets you talk instead of type – here’s how

Listen to other Podcasts of the Linux Syndicate Family:

Join Bill, Majid, Eric and Charlie on Linux OTC, Linux Off The Cuff, for an unscripted and unpredictable conversation about all things Linux, Open Source and more.
Join Dale and Majid on Distrohoppers’ Digest to hear about their experiences and challenges with trying out different Linux distros.

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing, hosting & maintaining our Nextcloud & web servers.
  • Londoner for his contributions, from News to Time Syncs.
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about. Thanks Clem & Team.
]]> full 2:26:03 8093 487 – Goodbye US Office, Hello Euro Office https://mintcast.org/487-goodbye-us-office-hello-euro-office/ Tue, 09 Jun 2026 04:57:28 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=8067 First up the news

We have a great little tool in the “Check This Section”

]]> First up the news


We have a great little tool in the “Check This Section”

Link To Full Show Notes

The News:


Linux is Getting a Free Pass on Age Verification in California and Colorado


DuckDuckGo Installs Up 30% After Google Announced AI Search


New social features further Plex’s evolution from media server business


Euro-Office: General availability set for June 9


Acer Launching Streaming-Only Handheld Gaming PC Running Debian


Microsoft cut its engineers off from AI because the bill got too big — why AI might not take your job after all


EU plots long game against US digital supremacy


Brave Software inc releases a stable version of the Brave Origin Browser

Check This Out


Handy is a free, private, local AI speech-to-text app.

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing and for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo,
  • .initrd for the animated logo on Discord
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> full 59:32 8067 425 – Firefox Down https://mintcast.org/425-firefox-down/ Sun, 19 Nov 2023 03:17:20 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6460 First up in the news: Ubuntu 24.04 gets a name, Mozilla Doubles Down on Firefox DEB Package, Discord is now official on Flathub, scrcpy gets an update, LXQt 1.4.0 is released, Firefox Accounts gets a Mozilla rename, Brave launches an AI, there is a new Audacity, OpenELA forms to preserve RHEL access, Element gets a new license, Proton has a new app, Fedora 39 is released, and OBS Studio 30 is out

Then in our Wanderings: Bill gets things linked up, Joe plays with Nextcloud, Moss shuffles his files around, Majid plays musical chairs, and Eric finally buys a tablet.

Download
]]> First up in the news: Ubuntu 24.04 gets a name, Mozilla Doubles Down on Firefox DEB Package, Discord is now official on Flathub, scrcpy gets an update, LXQt 1.4.0 is released, Firefox Accounts gets a Mozilla rename, Brave launches an AI, there is a new Audacity, OpenELA forms to preserve RHEL access, Element gets a new license, Proton has a new app, Fedora 39 is released, and OBS Studio 30 is out

In security and privacy: we got nothing

Then in our Wanderings: Bill gets things linked up, Joe plays with Nextcloud, Moss shuffles his files around, Majid plays musical chairs, and Eric finally buys a tablet.

  1. 00:00:00 – Intro
  2. 00:01:48 – News
  3. 01:09:23 – Bi-Weekly Wanderings
  4. 01:37:57 – Housekeeping and Announcemnts
  5. 01:38:45 – Wrap Up
  6. 01:40:38 – Special Thanks

The News

Ubuntu 24.04 gets a name

Mozilla Doubles Down on Firefox DEB Package

Discord is now Verified on Flathub

scrcpy v2.2

LXQt 1.4.0 Released

Why ‘Firefox accounts’ are becoming ‘Mozilla accounts’

Brave launches Leo AI

Audacity 3.4 Released with New Music Workflows, Time Stretch Tool

CIQ, Oracle, and SUSE unite behind OpenELA to take on Red Hat Enterprise Linux

A new home and license (AGPL) for Synapse and friends

Proton releases a brand-new Linux app with many new features for its Proton VPN service

Fedora Linux 39 is officially here!

OBS Studio 30 Released with Support for Intel QSV H264, HEVC, and AV1 on Linux

Full Show Notes Can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contribution
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 425 425 Firefox Down full 1:42:37 6460 416.5 – Browser Arousal https://mintcast.org/416-5-browser-arousal/ Wed, 19 Jul 2023 05:00:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6268 In our Innards section we talk browsers

And finally, the feedback

In "Check This Out" a link to a cool project and a YouTube video worth giving a look

Download
]]> In our Innards section we talk browsers

And finally, the feedback

In “Check This Out”

A link to a cool project and a YouTube video worth giving a look.

https://openscad.org/downloads.html

https://youtu.be/KyADkmRVe0U

Full Show Notes Can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

We would like to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contribution
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> full 1:35:40 6268 392 – Return of the Trampolines https://mintcast.org/392-the-return-of-the-trampolines/ Fri, 05 Aug 2022 23:57:37 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5559 In security and privacy, the Retbleed speculative exploit is more than just speculation, but the kernel team already have a fix, and Lightning Framework flashes our way;
Then in our Wanderings, Bill is back from Pennsylvania again and again, Norbert polishes his laptop, Moss is doing the Makulu Shift, Joe is working the mods, Josh T is fixing watches, and Tom is channeling.
Download
]]> 2:30 The News
29:46 Security and Privacy
42:06 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:30:26 Housekeeping and Announcements

First up in the news: Vanessa is almost here, Xfce flirts with Wayland, GNOME is touching up the touchscreen experience, and STAR protects data on Brave browsers;

In security and privacy, the Retbleed speculative exploit is more than just speculation, but the kernel team already have a fix, and Lightning Framework flashes our way;

Then in our Wanderings, Bill is back from Pennsylvania again and again, Norbert polishes his laptop, Moss is doing the Makulu Shift, Joe is working the mods, Josh T is fixing watches, and Tom is channeling.

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

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 392 - Return of the Trampolines full 1:35:20 5559 373.5 – App-Get Install https://mintcast.org/373-5-app-get-install/ Wed, 10 Nov 2021 07:03:36 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5267 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:39 Linux Innards
28:54 Vibrations from the Ether
35:16 Check This Out
41:57 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we discuss the applications that we use most often

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

  • Joe
    • Cura
    • Standard Notes
    • Resilio Sync
  • Tony
    • Firefox
    • GIMP
    • Inkscape
    • Audacity
  • Norbert
    • Brave
    • LibreOffice
    • OBS
    • Photoshop
    • Premiere Pro
    • Illustrator
  •  Josh
    • Firefox
    • Lollypop
    • EasyTAG
    • Syncthing
    • GnuCash

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Alfred

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 373.5 - App-Get Install full 46:52 5267 mintCast 359.5 – FLoC Blocked (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-359-5-floc-blocked-mp3/ Wed, 28 Apr 2021 06:34:58 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5039 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

2:30 Linux Innards
48:43 Vibrations from the Ether
57:56 Check This Out
1:08:03 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, another stroll down privacy lane

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Reddit.

LINUX INNARDS:

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

CHECK THIS OUT!

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 5039 mintCast 359.5 – FLoC Blocked https://mintcast.org/mintcast-359-5-floc-blocked/ Wed, 28 Apr 2021 06:31:21 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5034 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

2:30 Linux Innards
48:43 Vibrations from the Ether
57:56 Check This Out
1:08:03 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, another stroll down privacy lane

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Reddit.

LINUX INNARDS:

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

CHECK THIS OUT!

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 5034 mintCast 356 – Forced-o-Matic Updates (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-356-forced-o-matic-updates-mp3/ Wed, 10 Mar 2021 06:32:34 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4959 Then, in the News, SteamLink is on Linux, Mageia 8 is out, and Brave Searches for itself.
In Security, LastPass tracks you.
Download
]]> Download

2:05 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
45:33 The News
1:18:37 Check This Out
1:26:12 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve upgraded my ears, Joe fixes everything, Moss gets ready to attack a monster, Tony Hughes takes a walk with tools, Josh is getting NAS-ty, and Mike weeps over wifi woes.

Then, in the News, SteamLink is on Linux, Mageia 8 is out, and Brave Searches for itself.

In Security, LastPass tracks you.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • I got some new headphones. ATH-M50Xbt
    • An ssd I thought died didn’t. It’s in an external USB enclosure now, and I used it to do the backup testing for the Innards.
  • Joe
    • Had to go back and re-fix my MMCX connections on the 1mores again.  Which means that I did not do as good of a job as I thought last time.  Kinda wish it had some kind of built in tension reliever which would help a little bit.
    • Had a lot of trouble getting the last Anker Soundcore put together and then once again like the other one it would not charge.  I could go into the whole sordid tale of broken ribbon cables and screws popping out of mountings but it just makes me angry.  So in the end, of the 4 I was only able to get one working properly so the whole product line is going to be a no-go for me.  I took the custom made cables from it and put them onto one of the HBS 770s that I still have in reserve.  I may do a few more 770s just for the fun of it but I am looking for alternatives since I don’t think they are being made anymore
    • Ordered a broken pair of Samsung Level U headphones with ANC.  Requires a solvent to break down the glue in order to take it apart.  Also got a really cheap iHome Medallion headset that my wife was able to get for 5 dollars (got 2 of them).  They are in new condition, fresh out of the box, but I am going to mod them anyway. I don’t think that I will get much battery life out of them and I want to modify the Medallion so that it will sit on the collar without moving and so that it can also use the 1mores which should improve sound quality.  
      1. Also going to look into possibly printing a new case for it and giving it a larger battery.  Or at least a new back case but I will need to check and see where the hole for the mic is.  If it is on the back I will need to be creative with how I situate said battery.
      2. I did get the Level U’s. I was able to get it taken apart with minimal damage to the casing.  I probably would not have taken it apart at all except that instead of a bad side on the headset it had a bad battery.  I was able to use one of the batteries from the Ankers which is a little smaller but the replacement batteries that would fit all cost more than I wanted to pay.  Have not done the mmcx mod to the headset and I won’t because they suck.  I am not impressed with the top end volume on them and call quality is terrible.  Don’t know if I somehow tugged the mic and put it into the wrong location but I won’t be working more on this if that is the call quality
    • Thinking about resituating my tablets and seeing if I can get some more use out of them.  Going to sell the 7140 and use the 7130 as a bedroom computer. 
      1. I did spin both of those back up to make sure that the batteries are still good and both updated easily with no issues.
      2. Even I now think that the 7130 is getting a bit long in the tooth but I have yet to find a proper affordable tablet replacement that can run Linux, has a decent screen and fast processing speed.
      3. The Dell Latitude 7200 shows some promise but the price is still a bit high for about $400 same with the 5290
      4. I was able to order a Dell Latitude 5285 for $120 that should have been an easy fix with a bad display cable.  Turned out it had a lot more wrong with it.  Including the USB ports to the point where one of the times that I hooked it up the magic smoke got out.  So $120 wasted. But I should be able to get some good parts out of it for the next one if I can get another at a good price, when I have money again. I did message the seller and he said that I purchased “as is” but then they refunded me anyway
      5. I do have to say though for the few minutes that it was running it it seemed to run Linux well.  The only issue that I saw was the touch screen rotation was inverted to the screen rotation.  But that would probably not be a difficult fix.
    • BTSync has been acting up again.  Had to delete my shares and recreate them a couple of times to get things working again so I may need to find a different syncing solution.  The application did not crash or anything just silently stopped syncing changes.  Seems like it is starting to have problems with syncing time stamps.
      1. https://leochavez.org/index.php/2019/09/21/installing-nextcloud-in-ubuntu/
    • Have still not done much 3-D printing lately, but with the warmer temperatures I did print another adapter for the olympic weights to standard bar.  Which allows me to increase the weights for deadlifts and curls.
  • Moss
    • I have installed Mageia 8. I installed Plasma on the Kudu. The installer was more involved than most but was understandable even to me, although it needed to be more graphical and use a larger font. I installed Mageia 8 XFCE on the Inspiron, the same steps but with better graphics and fonts. It doesn’t feel Mandrake-level user-friendly, but it appears to be what I’m reviewing for Episode 021 of Distrohoppers’ Digest. I have also grabbed Emmabunt̎ũs and Robolinux for further evaluation.
    • Speaking of distros, Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 018 was at 718 downloads today, and Episode 019 leaped ahead of it with 721. We had a lot of fun doing Episode 020, which is already at 424 downloads, and I’m already at work on the script for 021. 
    • Listener and old friend firecat sent me a Series 5 Yubikey, he says it does not have NFC and he apparently got it with a subscription to Wired Magazine. I have had a lot of adventures with this, as it did not work after setting it up as 2FA on Bitwarden. Eventually I somehow tricked Bitwarden into letting me delete that 2FA feature and set up another one. I’m a little concerned that it did not work the first time I tried to use it for 2FA, and a little concerned I managed to defeat the security to fix it. I got all the recovery information saved — I printed it out, and deleted the text file, and hopefully will find a memorable safe place for the printout. I’m still having trouble deciding what to do with it, as most of the uses suggested don’t really tell me what they do, or what they are for, in words I understand. Yet, even if I don’t figure it out, I’m extremely grateful for the gift.
    • We’ve done more work on It’s MOSS, adding articles, graphics, and people, with Dale Miracle being added to the team and one or two others talking to me about future articles. We also have come to an agreement to share articles with Full Circle Magazine, and to publish our articles under the same CC/BY-SA license. Dylan is going back over our site to attach the license info to our articles.
    • Speaking of It’s MOSS, It’s time to get your votes in on Distro Madness, Round 2; voting will close this Friday before moving on to Round 3. We’re getting a lot of participation in this fun little diversion. We would like to encourage you to become a member of the site; we have some plans in the works for making additional features for members only, and membership is free.
    • My wife’s new HP Zia800 came in, and it is a monstrous thing of beauty. The keyboard seller sent the wrong keyboard, but the right one got here Friday. The seller did not ask for the other keyboard to be returned, so if anyone wants a Microsoft Sculpt keyboard, without the mouse and 10-key pad which usually are boxed with it, and is willing to pay the postage, I have one. We have received the wifi card. As soon as I’m feeling up to it, I will install the wifi card and plug things in. It came with Windoze 10 on it, she’ll be dual-booting it to Mint…or rather, dual-booting to Windows with Mint primary.
    • I’ve been having a bit of a rough time, with my mother’s interment, work as a substitute teacher being intermittent at best, and other things. But I’ll be OK. And Dresden is still plugging along in Book 10, Chapter 20.
  • Tony Hughes
    • Recorded the latest episode of Distrohoppers Digest with Dale and Moss. This one was 1 hour long, as having 3 hosts and a new section we have expanded the time taken. It’s a good thing I am not doing a regular review anymore, as due to my health issues I am concentrating on the post production side of the show. I will still be there each episode to keep everyone on track lol. 
    • Aldi here in the UK did a sale of tools last week and I picked up a couple of 10w LED battery portable workshop lights which can also be used as power banks. I also got a digital caliper for £8/$11.20 which is good value as in the local hardware store they were £20 the last time I looked. I also had to buy a new LED bulb for my workshop/office as the old one just stopped working. The replacement seems a lot brighter so maybe the other one had been on the way out for a while.
    • Went on a long walk with my better half last Monday, we walked all the way along the Prom here in Blackpool to the next Town along, Cleveleys, which is about 8 miles away; a few years ago I was not able to walk from the lounge to the kitchen which is about 10 steps, due to arthritis, my final tally for the day was just under 21K. Getting fit is helping keep the arthritis controlled so I have more good days than bad at the moment.
    • I was looking at a Dell 9th gen i7 XPS15 but I missed the boat as they have all gone, so I’m now looking at an Entroware 17” Hybris which for the price with 32Gb of RAM is less than a £1000, I would add my own PCie NVME m.2 card later as I can pick one up for half the quoted upgrade prices on the site and the same with the SSD. There is a link in the show notes to the site if you are interested, and NO we are not sponsored by them. 
  • Josh
    • Crowbar Kernel Panic has a website! https://crowbarkernelpanic.fireside.fm
    • Crowbar Kernel Panic is officially on Spotify as well! Just search Crowbar Kernel Panic on Spotify and you will find it.
  • Ryzen 7 5800x totally changed my Linux gaming experience. 
  • TrueNAS is really cool but I have not had success sharing files over the network. I have created a user and a dataset and enabled SMB on the dataset and the sharing settings but I still cannot log into my SMB from another computer.
  • TrueNAS is working now I didn’t do anything and now I can log in to my share with no issues.
  • Mike
    • WiFi woes – 5/30, modem, router, sig strength, packets, net man, kernel, live USB, timeshift…
    • New Dell XPS DE…

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on March 21, 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!>
]]> full 4959 mintCast 356 – Forced-o-Matic Updates https://mintcast.org/mintcast-356-forced-o-matic-updates/ Wed, 10 Mar 2021 06:21:31 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4955 Then, in the News, SteamLink is on Linux, Mageia 8 is out, and Brave Searches for itself.
In Security, LastPass tracks you.
Download
]]> Download

2:05 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
45:33 The News
1:18:37 Check This Out
1:26:12 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve upgraded my ears, Joe fixes everything, Moss gets ready to attack a monster, Tony Hughes takes a walk with tools, Josh is getting NAS-ty, and Mike weeps over wifi woes.

Then, in the News, SteamLink is on Linux, Mageia 8 is out, and Brave Searches for itself.

In Security, LastPass tracks you.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • I got some new headphones. ATH-M50Xbt
    • An ssd I thought died didn’t. It’s in an external USB enclosure now, and I used it to do the backup testing for the Innards.
  • Joe
    • Had to go back and re-fix my MMCX connections on the 1mores again.  Which means that I did not do as good of a job as I thought last time.  Kinda wish it had some kind of built in tension reliever which would help a little bit.
    • Had a lot of trouble getting the last Anker Soundcore put together and then once again like the other one it would not charge.  I could go into the whole sordid tale of broken ribbon cables and screws popping out of mountings but it just makes me angry.  So in the end, of the 4 I was only able to get one working properly so the whole product line is going to be a no-go for me.  I took the custom made cables from it and put them onto one of the HBS 770s that I still have in reserve.  I may do a few more 770s just for the fun of it but I am looking for alternatives since I don’t think they are being made anymore
    • Ordered a broken pair of Samsung Level U headphones with ANC.  Requires a solvent to break down the glue in order to take it apart.  Also got a really cheap iHome Medallion headset that my wife was able to get for 5 dollars (got 2 of them).  They are in new condition, fresh out of the box, but I am going to mod them anyway. I don’t think that I will get much battery life out of them and I want to modify the Medallion so that it will sit on the collar without moving and so that it can also use the 1mores which should improve sound quality.  
      1. Also going to look into possibly printing a new case for it and giving it a larger battery.  Or at least a new back case but I will need to check and see where the hole for the mic is.  If it is on the back I will need to be creative with how I situate said battery.
      2. I did get the Level U’s. I was able to get it taken apart with minimal damage to the casing.  I probably would not have taken it apart at all except that instead of a bad side on the headset it had a bad battery.  I was able to use one of the batteries from the Ankers which is a little smaller but the replacement batteries that would fit all cost more than I wanted to pay.  Have not done the mmcx mod to the headset and I won’t because they suck.  I am not impressed with the top end volume on them and call quality is terrible.  Don’t know if I somehow tugged the mic and put it into the wrong location but I won’t be working more on this if that is the call quality
    • Thinking about resituating my tablets and seeing if I can get some more use out of them.  Going to sell the 7140 and use the 7130 as a bedroom computer. 
      1. I did spin both of those back up to make sure that the batteries are still good and both updated easily with no issues.
      2. Even I now think that the 7130 is getting a bit long in the tooth but I have yet to find a proper affordable tablet replacement that can run Linux, has a decent screen and fast processing speed.
      3. The Dell Latitude 7200 shows some promise but the price is still a bit high for about $400 same with the 5290
      4. I was able to order a Dell Latitude 5285 for $120 that should have been an easy fix with a bad display cable.  Turned out it had a lot more wrong with it.  Including the USB ports to the point where one of the times that I hooked it up the magic smoke got out.  So $120 wasted. But I should be able to get some good parts out of it for the next one if I can get another at a good price, when I have money again. I did message the seller and he said that I purchased “as is” but then they refunded me anyway
      5. I do have to say though for the few minutes that it was running it it seemed to run Linux well.  The only issue that I saw was the touch screen rotation was inverted to the screen rotation.  But that would probably not be a difficult fix.
    • BTSync has been acting up again.  Had to delete my shares and recreate them a couple of times to get things working again so I may need to find a different syncing solution.  The application did not crash or anything just silently stopped syncing changes.  Seems like it is starting to have problems with syncing time stamps.
      1. https://leochavez.org/index.php/2019/09/21/installing-nextcloud-in-ubuntu/
    • Have still not done much 3-D printing lately, but with the warmer temperatures I did print another adapter for the olympic weights to standard bar.  Which allows me to increase the weights for deadlifts and curls.
  • Moss
    • I have installed Mageia 8. I installed Plasma on the Kudu. The installer was more involved than most but was understandable even to me, although it needed to be more graphical and use a larger font. I installed Mageia 8 XFCE on the Inspiron, the same steps but with better graphics and fonts. It doesn’t feel Mandrake-level user-friendly, but it appears to be what I’m reviewing for Episode 021 of Distrohoppers’ Digest. I have also grabbed Emmabunt̎ũs and Robolinux for further evaluation.
    • Speaking of distros, Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 018 was at 718 downloads today, and Episode 019 leaped ahead of it with 721. We had a lot of fun doing Episode 020, which is already at 424 downloads, and I’m already at work on the script for 021. 
    • Listener and old friend firecat sent me a Series 5 Yubikey, he says it does not have NFC and he apparently got it with a subscription to Wired Magazine. I have had a lot of adventures with this, as it did not work after setting it up as 2FA on Bitwarden. Eventually I somehow tricked Bitwarden into letting me delete that 2FA feature and set up another one. I’m a little concerned that it did not work the first time I tried to use it for 2FA, and a little concerned I managed to defeat the security to fix it. I got all the recovery information saved — I printed it out, and deleted the text file, and hopefully will find a memorable safe place for the printout. I’m still having trouble deciding what to do with it, as most of the uses suggested don’t really tell me what they do, or what they are for, in words I understand. Yet, even if I don’t figure it out, I’m extremely grateful for the gift.
    • We’ve done more work on It’s MOSS, adding articles, graphics, and people, with Dale Miracle being added to the team and one or two others talking to me about future articles. We also have come to an agreement to share articles with Full Circle Magazine, and to publish our articles under the same CC/BY-SA license. Dylan is going back over our site to attach the license info to our articles.
    • Speaking of It’s MOSS, It’s time to get your votes in on Distro Madness, Round 2; voting will close this Friday before moving on to Round 3. We’re getting a lot of participation in this fun little diversion. We would like to encourage you to become a member of the site; we have some plans in the works for making additional features for members only, and membership is free.
    • My wife’s new HP Zia800 came in, and it is a monstrous thing of beauty. The keyboard seller sent the wrong keyboard, but the right one got here Friday. The seller did not ask for the other keyboard to be returned, so if anyone wants a Microsoft Sculpt keyboard, without the mouse and 10-key pad which usually are boxed with it, and is willing to pay the postage, I have one. We have received the wifi card. As soon as I’m feeling up to it, I will install the wifi card and plug things in. It came with Windoze 10 on it, she’ll be dual-booting it to Mint…or rather, dual-booting to Windows with Mint primary.
    • I’ve been having a bit of a rough time, with my mother’s interment, work as a substitute teacher being intermittent at best, and other things. But I’ll be OK. And Dresden is still plugging along in Book 10, Chapter 20.
  • Tony Hughes
    • Recorded the latest episode of Distrohoppers Digest with Dale and Moss. This one was 1 hour long, as having 3 hosts and a new section we have expanded the time taken. It’s a good thing I am not doing a regular review anymore, as due to my health issues I am concentrating on the post production side of the show. I will still be there each episode to keep everyone on track lol. 
    • Aldi here in the UK did a sale of tools last week and I picked up a couple of 10w LED battery portable workshop lights which can also be used as power banks. I also got a digital caliper for £8/$11.20 which is good value as in the local hardware store they were £20 the last time I looked. I also had to buy a new LED bulb for my workshop/office as the old one just stopped working. The replacement seems a lot brighter so maybe the other one had been on the way out for a while.
    • Went on a long walk with my better half last Monday, we walked all the way along the Prom here in Blackpool to the next Town along, Cleveleys, which is about 8 miles away; a few years ago I was not able to walk from the lounge to the kitchen which is about 10 steps, due to arthritis, my final tally for the day was just under 21K. Getting fit is helping keep the arthritis controlled so I have more good days than bad at the moment.
    • I was looking at a Dell 9th gen i7 XPS15 but I missed the boat as they have all gone, so I’m now looking at an Entroware 17” Hybris which for the price with 32Gb of RAM is less than a £1000, I would add my own PCie NVME m.2 card later as I can pick one up for half the quoted upgrade prices on the site and the same with the SSD. There is a link in the show notes to the site if you are interested, and NO we are not sponsored by them. 
  • Josh
    • Crowbar Kernel Panic has a website! https://crowbarkernelpanic.fireside.fm
    • Crowbar Kernel Panic is officially on Spotify as well! Just search Crowbar Kernel Panic on Spotify and you will find it.
  • Ryzen 7 5800x totally changed my Linux gaming experience. 
  • TrueNAS is really cool but I have not had success sharing files over the network. I have created a user and a dataset and enabled SMB on the dataset and the sharing settings but I still cannot log into my SMB from another computer.
  • TrueNAS is working now I didn’t do anything and now I can log in to my share with no issues.
  • Mike
    • WiFi woes – 5/30, modem, router, sig strength, packets, net man, kernel, live USB, timeshift…
    • New Dell XPS DE…

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on March 21, 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!>
]]> full 4955 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
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!>
]]> full 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!>
]]> full 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!>
]]> full 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!>
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