Chromebook – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Wed, 26 May 2021 03:29:25 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Chromebook – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false episodic CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast Chromebook – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 mintCast 361.5 – X2Joe https://mintcast.org/mintcast-361-5-x2joe/ Wed, 26 May 2021 03:18:45 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5077 And finally, the feedback and a first look
Download
]]> Download

2:37 Linux Innards
43:52 Vibrations from the Ether
1:03:21 Check this Out
1:07:26 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we pick some of our favorite (free and?) open source software

And finally, the feedback and a first look

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

LINUX INNARDS:

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • Brad

CHECK THIS OUT! 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 5077 mintCast 343 – Tinfoil Not Included (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-343-tinfoil-not-included-mp3/ Wed, 09 Sep 2020 04:27:36 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4615 Then, in the news, we have news from Mint, Debian, and  MX Linux. We also say goodbye to a team member.
In security, we take a break from the doom and gloom and just talk tinfoil.
Download
]]>

Download

1:47 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
42:01 Vibrations from the Ether
1:05:00 Check This Out
1:26:51 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I recorded some how-to’s, Moss has computers raining on him, Joe reads and repairs, Tony Watts jams and tinkers, and Bo and Tony Hughes will be back next episode.

Then, in the news, we have news from Mint, Debian, and  MX Linux. We also say goodbye to a team member.

In security, we take a break from the doom and gloom and just talk tinfoil.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • I’ve finally gotten some time to record a couple more how-to’s. Bashtop and Bpytop.
    • Also, I’m fairly current on Full Circle Weekly News again! I plan on doing a two-week episode this week to get current and it feels good.
  • Moss
    • About 2 hours after completing the last episode, I went to plug my speakers back into my desktop, slipped, and somehow shorted out my computer. A new power supply, thanks to Tony Hughes, arrived on Tuesday, and surprise, it was the wrong size. I’m supposed to have a mini ITX machine, and ordered accordingly, but the power supply in the box (and, yes, I should have looked first) was a full sized ATX. 
    • After complaining about that to the Telegram group, Fuzzy shipped me a new tower computer which will blow the socks off what I had. That should get here next Saturday.
    • I went ahead and returned the power supply to Amazon and have ordered the correct power supply from NewEgg, and when I get the old desktop repaired and running, I will find a deserving schoolkid to give it to.
    • On top of that, I went out to visit a friend last night, and came home with a pretty high-end older HP tower computer (Win 7 Home Premium license, early i7 processor). It’s quite dirty right now, so I’ll clean it up, check the specs and whether it runs, and see if I can find someone to give (or sell cheap) it to.
    • I tried using the Pi 4 as my TV machine but could not get my VPN to start, even though it was installed. Mullvad customer support was disappointing, considering how long I have been a customer.
    • So I signed up for a new VPN called Surfshark. If I can get it to work, it will cost about the same for 2 years as I would have paid for 8 months to Mullvad. It’s good when it works, but apparently that’s only on Ubuntu-based systems (a fact they neglected to mention). The Linux app is non-existent, although it has a nice app for Android and anything else. Their tech support was friendly initially, but now they’re falling into patterns of “Well, Linux users don’t want an easy way to run our VPN…”
    • What I haven’t done yet is try Surfshark on the Pi 4. Coming soon.
    • I moved the 1 Tb SSD from my desktop to my laptop last Tuesday night. I started running updates, as it had been about 11 days since these 7 distros had been updated. My Manjaro installation would not load, so I reinstalled it, then installed OpenMandriva on the remaining unused partition. I had both Feren OS and KDE neon which were basically Ubuntu-running-KDE and yearned for more diversity, so I flipped a coin and replaced Feren OS with Ubuntu Unity. I’m way behind on getting all these distros as near equivalent as possible or even evaluating their current status, things have been so much in flux.  I have also installed Surfshark on the four Ubuntu-based distros.
    • I have a new digital watch and fitness tracker. It only cost $7.95 and a two-month wait for it to get here from Szenchen, China. It connects to a phone app and can attach to social media and email but I don’t want that. I have no idea what other data it collects, but I’ve gained 20 pounds since my accident and want some incentive and help to start going the other way again. Besides the time function, it also detects my pulse, blood pressure, and even blood oxygen, as well as my steps. You ease the friction-fit watchband off on one end to expose the USB terminal — yes, you plug the entire watch into a USB port to charge it. A charge seems to last 3-4 days. There are virtually no controls on the watch, everything is run through the app.
    • My unemployment ran out. Not weeks, but dollars. My final check was under $100, so no covid money for Moss this week. On the other hand, I have 3 job possibilities, and it looks as if one of them will go through, although it will be a temporary job. Feast or famine. I’m not completely out of money yet, but it could be a race between that and my first paycheck. I have been encouraged to talk to a lawyer about the fact that I have been getting paid out of Unemployment dollars instead of Worker’s Comp funds, but the covid-19 money received puts a major question mark in that process as that comes only with unemployment money. While the potential fraud was not on my part, I was the beneficiary of it.
    • My mother went back to the hospital after she fell and broke the pin in her hip. They repaired the pin successfully. She has been moved from the hospital to the rehab facility, where she will spend at least a few weeks. She’s 91 now, in case you lost count.
    • We finished reading Blood Rites, the 6th Dresden book, and have started in on Dead Beat.
  • Joe
    • Soulwood series by Faith Hunter,  4 books of 5
      • Same universe as the Jane Yellowrock series.
      • Good series
    • Locke and Key audio drama
      • Based on the comics
      • Well done, easy to follow and interesting
    • Junkyard Pirate by Jamie McFarlane
      • Second book as well
    • Also from Jamie Mcfarlane
      • Wizard in a Witchy World series
    • Ministry of Curiosity (10 books)
      • Good series. Feels a bit generic, nothing really stands out for me
      • Sometimes the books in the series felt like nothing really happened.  Like there was no overriding antagonistic event
    • Suggest some good cyberpunk novels
    • 3D-printed a whole setup for the macro keyboards.  
      • 12 key and it works very well
      • I am very happy with the quality and I may do a few more
      • Using it to control my mic mute button and also have it setup for vlc and docker using auto hotkey functions
      • Still looking for the most comfortable position to mount it
    • Also got some very thin wire .1mm to see if I can bridge the bad spots on that other board so I can have another one.
      • Once I get it working correctly I will 3D print a case for it
      • It is also the wire that I used to run the grounds for all the other keys on the one i printed
    • My water heater started leaking.  Went through a good chunk of my garage and most of my kitchen.  Caught it quickly though and got the water shut off so not much damage.
      • Going through the warranty company to get it fixed. 
      • Warranty company has been somewhat hit or miss over the years so…
      • Cost me a bit over 500 so that is not too bad.
      • Need to build a moisture sensor for it and not sure if I should use an arduino or a Pi.  What do you think?
    • This also meant that I had to shuffle my garage around a couple of times.  Once to get everything off the far wall and once to get everything out of the way so that they could get the new one in.
      • This allowed me to restructure my storage and work area
      • My son helped me figure out where to put some things in order to maximize my space and make it look neater
      • Still have a lot more work to do 
    • I have  an iPod docking station that is going to be my next item to work on.  Looks more like a sound bar.  It turns on and the clock works but no sound comes out no matter what you set the input to.  Gonna be fun taking it apart and seeing where the break is.
    • Revamping my workout
  • Tony Watts
    • Basement finishing continues
      • Added some insulation to the ceiling.  This helps contain music noise a bit but also has the benefit of keeping unwanted noise out of the Studio/Office
      • First jam session in my basement rehearsal space was a success!
        • Despite is playing pretty loud, no ringing ears on our part and the sound didn’t carry outside too much
    • “Adventure” with bathroom flood
    • Some more chromebook crouton tinkering
      • One of my kids accidentally reset the Chromebook due to developer mode screen on startup (my fault, forgot to prep him) 
      • Installed both KDE and Gnome variants of Crouton.
        • KDE was buggy on this particular Chromebook
        • Gnome was just too slow
        • Went back to XFCE which is Crouton’s default and works very well
    • Really debating a new phone purchase, Pixel 4a
      • After 3.5 years of heavy use my OnePlus 3T still holding up well but the charge port is worn out and that is getting annoying
      • Most new phones will support dual sim which is kind of a requirement for me
    • On vacation this week, working on 
      • More basement refinishing
      • Music recording
      • Prep for another Ironshield Brewing gig next weekend

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • There wasn’t much Linux centric today, and to keep this discussion episode going with discussion: 
    • How much of a tinfoil hatter are you?
    • What do you do in your life to secure yourself up?
  • Londoner: Proton Drive

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, September 20, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC and 8 pm British Summer Time. Time conversions are available at https://www.timeanddate.com. You can use Austin, Texas as a Central Time reference.

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for audio editing
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 4615 mintCast 343 – Tinfoil Not Included https://mintcast.org/mintcast-343-tinfoil-not-included/ Wed, 09 Sep 2020 04:08:25 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4610 Then, in the news, we have news from Mint, Debian, and  MX Linux. We also say goodbye to a team member.
In security, we take a break from the doom and gloom and just talk tinfoil.
Download
]]>

Download

1:47 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
42:01 The News
1:05:00 Security
1:26:51 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I recorded some how-to’s, Moss has computers raining on him, Joe reads and repairs, Tony Watts jams and tinkers, and Bo and Tony Hughes will be back next episode.

Then, in the news, we have news from Mint, Debian, and  MX Linux. We also say goodbye to a team member.

In security, we take a break from the doom and gloom and just talk tinfoil.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • I’ve finally gotten some time to record a couple more how-to’s. Bashtop and Bpytop.
    • Also, I’m fairly current on Full Circle Weekly News again! I plan on doing a two-week episode this week to get current and it feels good.
  • Moss
    • About 2 hours after completing the last episode, I went to plug my speakers back into my desktop, slipped, and somehow shorted out my computer. A new power supply, thanks to Tony Hughes, arrived on Tuesday, and surprise, it was the wrong size. I’m supposed to have a mini ITX machine, and ordered accordingly, but the power supply in the box (and, yes, I should have looked first) was a full sized ATX. 
    • After complaining about that to the Telegram group, Fuzzy shipped me a new tower computer which will blow the socks off what I had. That should get here next Saturday.
    • I went ahead and returned the power supply to Amazon and have ordered the correct power supply from NewEgg, and when I get the old desktop repaired and running, I will find a deserving schoolkid to give it to.
    • On top of that, I went out to visit a friend last night, and came home with a pretty high-end older HP tower computer (Win 7 Home Premium license, early i7 processor). It’s quite dirty right now, so I’ll clean it up, check the specs and whether it runs, and see if I can find someone to give (or sell cheap) it to.
    • I tried using the Pi 4 as my TV machine but could not get my VPN to start, even though it was installed. Mullvad customer support was disappointing, considering how long I have been a customer.
    • So I signed up for a new VPN called Surfshark. If I can get it to work, it will cost about the same for 2 years as I would have paid for 8 months to Mullvad. It’s good when it works, but apparently that’s only on Ubuntu-based systems (a fact they neglected to mention). The Linux app is non-existent, although it has a nice app for Android and anything else. Their tech support was friendly initially, but now they’re falling into patterns of “Well, Linux users don’t want an easy way to run our VPN…”
    • What I haven’t done yet is try Surfshark on the Pi 4. Coming soon.
    • I moved the 1 Tb SSD from my desktop to my laptop last Tuesday night. I started running updates, as it had been about 11 days since these 7 distros had been updated. My Manjaro installation would not load, so I reinstalled it, then installed OpenMandriva on the remaining unused partition. I had both Feren OS and KDE neon which were basically Ubuntu-running-KDE and yearned for more diversity, so I flipped a coin and replaced Feren OS with Ubuntu Unity. I’m way behind on getting all these distros as near equivalent as possible or even evaluating their current status, things have been so much in flux.  I have also installed Surfshark on the four Ubuntu-based distros.
    • I have a new digital watch and fitness tracker. It only cost $7.95 and a two-month wait for it to get here from Szenchen, China. It connects to a phone app and can attach to social media and email but I don’t want that. I have no idea what other data it collects, but I’ve gained 20 pounds since my accident and want some incentive and help to start going the other way again. Besides the time function, it also detects my pulse, blood pressure, and even blood oxygen, as well as my steps. You ease the friction-fit watchband off on one end to expose the USB terminal — yes, you plug the entire watch into a USB port to charge it. A charge seems to last 3-4 days. There are virtually no controls on the watch, everything is run through the app.
    • My unemployment ran out. Not weeks, but dollars. My final check was under $100, so no covid money for Moss this week. On the other hand, I have 3 job possibilities, and it looks as if one of them will go through, although it will be a temporary job. Feast or famine. I’m not completely out of money yet, but it could be a race between that and my first paycheck. I have been encouraged to talk to a lawyer about the fact that I have been getting paid out of Unemployment dollars instead of Worker’s Comp funds, but the covid-19 money received puts a major question mark in that process as that comes only with unemployment money. While the potential fraud was not on my part, I was the beneficiary of it.
    • My mother went back to the hospital after she fell and broke the pin in her hip. They repaired the pin successfully. She has been moved from the hospital to the rehab facility, where she will spend at least a few weeks. She’s 91 now, in case you lost count.
    • We finished reading Blood Rites, the 6th Dresden book, and have started in on Dead Beat.
  • Joe
    • Soulwood series by Faith Hunter,  4 books of 5
      • Same universe as the Jane Yellowrock series.
      • Good series
    • Locke and Key audio drama
      • Based on the comics
      • Well done, easy to follow and interesting
    • Junkyard Pirate by Jamie McFarlane
      • Second book as well
    • Also from Jamie Mcfarlane
      • Wizard in a Witchy World series
    • Ministry of Curiosity (10 books)
      • Good series. Feels a bit generic, nothing really stands out for me
      • Sometimes the books in the series felt like nothing really happened.  Like there was no overriding antagonistic event
    • Suggest some good cyberpunk novels
    • 3D-printed a whole setup for the macro keyboards.  
      • 12 key and it works very well
      • I am very happy with the quality and I may do a few more
      • Using it to control my mic mute button and also have it setup for vlc and docker using auto hotkey functions
      • Still looking for the most comfortable position to mount it
    • Also got some very thin wire .1mm to see if I can bridge the bad spots on that other board so I can have another one.
      • Once I get it working correctly I will 3D print a case for it
      • It is also the wire that I used to run the grounds for all the other keys on the one i printed
    • My water heater started leaking.  Went through a good chunk of my garage and most of my kitchen.  Caught it quickly though and got the water shut off so not much damage.
      • Going through the warranty company to get it fixed. 
      • Warranty company has been somewhat hit or miss over the years so…
      • Cost me a bit over 500 so that is not too bad.
      • Need to build a moisture sensor for it and not sure if I should use an arduino or a Pi.  What do you think?
    • This also meant that I had to shuffle my garage around a couple of times.  Once to get everything off the far wall and once to get everything out of the way so that they could get the new one in.
      • This allowed me to restructure my storage and work area
      • My son helped me figure out where to put some things in order to maximize my space and make it look neater
      • Still have a lot more work to do 
    • I have  an iPod docking station that is going to be my next item to work on.  Looks more like a sound bar.  It turns on and the clock works but no sound comes out no matter what you set the input to.  Gonna be fun taking it apart and seeing where the break is.
    • Revamping my workout
  • Tony Watts
    • Basement finishing continues
      • Added some insulation to the ceiling.  This helps contain music noise a bit but also has the benefit of keeping unwanted noise out of the Studio/Office
      • First jam session in my basement rehearsal space was a success!
        • Despite is playing pretty loud, no ringing ears on our part and the sound didn’t carry outside too much
    • “Adventure” with bathroom flood
    • Some more chromebook crouton tinkering
      • One of my kids accidentally reset the Chromebook due to developer mode screen on startup (my fault, forgot to prep him) 
      • Installed both KDE and Gnome variants of Crouton.
        • KDE was buggy on this particular Chromebook
        • Gnome was just too slow
        • Went back to XFCE which is Crouton’s default and works very well
    • Really debating a new phone purchase, Pixel 4a
      • After 3.5 years of heavy use my OnePlus 3T still holding up well but the charge port is worn out and that is getting annoying
      • Most new phones will support dual sim which is kind of a requirement for me
    • On vacation this week, working on 
      • More basement refinishing
      • Music recording
      • Prep for another Ironshield Brewing gig next weekend

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • There wasn’t much Linux centric today, and to keep this discussion episode going with discussion: 
    • How much of a tinfoil hatter are you?
    • What do you do in your life to secure yourself up?
  • Londoner: Proton Drive

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, September 20, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC and 8 pm British Summer Time. Time conversions are available at https://www.timeanddate.com. You can use Austin, Texas as a Central Time reference.

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for audio editing
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 4610 mintCast 341 – GRUB Breaks the Internet (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-341-grub-breaks-the-internet-mp3/ Wed, 12 Aug 2020 04:36:37 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4570 Then, our news Linux Mint gets stats, Gnome squashes a memory bug, and Ubuntu hits its first 20.04 point release.
In security, Intel pulls an Intel
Download
]]>

Download

1:38 Wanderings
45:15 News
53:22 Check This Out
1:08:21 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been browsing, Joe’s been fixing docks, Moss has been slowly filling up his machine, and Tony Watts gets a new axe

Then, our news Linux Mint gets stats, Gnome squashes a memory bug, and Ubuntu hits its first 20.04 point release.

In security, Intel pulls an Intel

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Configuring GPU rendering on Firefox
      • In about:config , change “gfx.webrender.all” to “true”
      • Great on the desktop where I have a discrete card. Not so much on the laptop where it’s integrated and can get choppy at higher loads.
    • One thing I keep running into in other distributions besides Mint is odd color profiles in anything Chromium based. 
      • My eyes aren’t good enough to see if it’s absolutely everything, but I can certainly see a red hue on links which turn them purple.
      • This includes electron apps like Discord. The links and my profile picture look funny.
      • I can fix it in Chrome and Chromium by changing the Force Color Profile option in chrome://flags from “default” to “sRGB”
      • This doesn’t work in Electron apps cause I don’t know how to do this! Is there a command line addition? In flatpak? Curious and annoying.
    • Got a windscreen for my PodMic. 
      • I was noticing a lot of air in my P’s and B’s in the recordings. This should cut it down a little.
      • It was a non standard size, and since it already has an internal pop filter, there weren’t many choices. $12 later, I have one.
  • Moss
    • I added Manjaro Cinnamon to my Desktop PC last week, and last night I burned a USB stick with the latest Feren OS and installed it. I then reburned the stick for Gecko ROLLING, but it was too late to start another installation. And you have no idea how much willpower it took to not install it just before the show.. This means I have at least one variant of every base Linux distro except Red Hat and Slackware (unless you count that SuSE was the first variant of Slackware). I also do not have any independents such as Solus. I have not quite finished configuring everything I have installed, but I did make up a neat checklist to make sure I was getting everything. I will still have 2 free partitions on my desktop and 1 on my laptop… gotta get serious and do more hopping!
    • I got my new Raspberry Pi 4, a gift from Firecat which I previously mentioned, working with Ubuntu MATE 20.04. I even got Mullvad working on it. The only software I can’t load are SoftMaker Office (or FreeOffice) and PySolFC, neither of which apparently come in ARM64 versions. I discovered that the sound features of the Pi are a bit on the weak side; at no more than 80% of the normal loudness of my desktop, using the same powered speakers, the sound is a bit on the fuzzy side. I have ordered a USB sound “card” from eBay, and it should be here soon.
    • I also just received some new Bluetooth earbuds, AMZLAB Gmbh T16. It’s weird having something just “sit comfortably in your ear” and not be actually affixed with rubber earplugs. For the most part, they sit. I’ve had them drop out a couple times, and accidentally turn off when I pick them up. Still learning the ins and outs of these, but they seem cool. I decided to order them with the last of my covid-19 money when the nice LG headset Joe had sent me started having the right ear go in and out. And of course they are having trouble working with my desktop and Mumble, so I’m still wearing my old wired earbuds for this show.
    • My wife’s T430 messed up running Mint 20 Cinnamon. After trying a few things, I wound up replacing the SSD with another one and doing a clean install of Mint 20 MATE. I also attempted to put KDE neon on it, but that would not boot AND messed up the Mint boot. I put Ubuntu Unity in the second partition and ran Grub Customizer, and now Mint boots. That was 3 hours of a whole lot of not fun, but I got the job done.
    • I’m finding a few more jobs to apply for. I have yet to get an actual response except for the one two months ago, and they also had their own employment section for seniors but I haven’t heard from them either. There have been a few online tests, but I haven’t heard the results from those either; you rarely do, except for possibly getting an interview or a next step.
    • Ubuntu Unity 20.04.1 was released on the 6th. I did a complete new installation, and used the same partition I previously had installed Unity 20.04. I got everything set up the way I wanted it, and then returned control of GRUB to OpenMandriva, (because nobody does a beautiful GRUB screen like OM4). I immediately discovered that I could not boot into Ubuntu Unity but all my other distros worked. DUH. OM4 had not been updated for the new installation and was still looking for the old one. Back into OM4: sudo update-grub2. 
    • We finished reading Death Masks, the 5th book in the Dresden Files series, and have started the 6th, Blood Rites. Still don’t think it’s as good as Demon Squad, but we’re enjoying it.
  • Joe
    • I know Josh and I discussed it before but I am going to make my own macro keyboard
      • I have ordered a solderable 12 key keyboard and an arduino pro micro
      • I will set it up along with hotkeys to run programs that are already setup or to kick off bash scripts in a specific locations
    • Ended up with 12 of the Lenovo docks in the set of 10 that I ordered to see if I could fix.
      • All of them worked but 3 were missing some of the outer casing
        • Was able to 3D print some mounts that cover the missing parts and I will be keeping those for myself to use in future projects
      • This is probably also the right time of year to be selling with school about to start
      • Still need to buy some power supplies for them, which I think I can get for around 7 dollars a piece
      • That means the total cost will be around 9 dollars each and I am going to try and sell 9 of them for 30 dollars each (which is 10 dollars less than you can find them anywhere else)
    • Started playing around with X2Go screen mirroring instead of the usual spinning off a new desktop and I have to say that it works really well.
      • It used to be that you would have to install a whole new application specific for the task but now it is built into the server application and it works awesome.  
      • Using it with the 7140 in conjunction with the dock until I get some more HDMI cables
      • I do see some occasional latency but nothing insurmountable and only on the wifi in the garage.  I should put a wifi access point out there and see if that helps
    • Small problem with the 7130 and the 7140 with the dock.  They heat up and dont charge worth a darn.  Not sure what the issue is at this point.  I could try modding the dock so that it has a cooling fan in the back that blows against the tablet but that won’t fix the underlying issue.  Why is it heating up?  It doesn’t do that when connected to the keyboard dock or when connected to the other power supply. 
    • Borderlands 3 on mint with proton
      • Worked after reinstalling Vulkan
      • Slow to start but runs smooth after the first few seconds  *ACO 
    • Made it to book 12 in the Drizzt collection and decided to take a break so I don’t get burned out on it with 24 left to go
    • M.R. Forbes Ghost and Magic books
      • 4 book series
    • Son of the Blacksword books 1 and 2
    • Steve McHugh Death Unleashed one of the Hellequin novels
    • Stephen Blackmoore’s Eric Carter novel 1-3
    • Headphones fun
      • Found a really good deal on 6 broken Skullcandy Hesh 3’s which are not as good as the Crushers but have some really good things going for them.  Like passthrough power. And the fact that all the electronics are on one side.  Which makes them better for building my own bluetooth dongles
      • Already have two different types of female connectors that I can use but I will only do it to the ones that I cannot get back in good working order.
      • My other Hesh 3’s that I had sitting around ended up with a bloated battery but I was able to replace it with one from one of the 2 Crushers that I was not able to get working. The battery size was a little different but there was plenty of room to work and they are all the same 3.7 volts.
      • Someone asked me to fix a PS3 headset that their kid was using for school and I agreed.  Cechya 0080
        • Loaned them one of the Crushers with the 3D printed hinges and a couple of extra hinges just in case
        • Bad battery and some broken plastic around the mic and some occasional static on the mic
        • Replaced the battery easy enough with one with a lot more capacity.  It turns on but takes a super long time to charge fully
        • Used Gorilla Glue to reseat the plastic for the mic but my son then broke it again so I ended up gluing it to the side at full extension.  
  • Tony W
    • Beverage sampling
    • I gots me a NEW ELECTRIC GUITAR Y’ALL!!
    • GIGS!
      • Played at Ironshield Brewing Friday night.  New brewery right in my backyard, serving up German lagers and Belgian ales.  Lovely place, great crowd, and everyone really seemed to enjoy the music.  I met a couple of the owners.  Owners and staff were very pleased with the live music and I’ll be back again in September, and hopefully regularly after that.  
      • Played Lucky’s in Brookhaven (near Atlanta) Saturday night, last minute pickup gig to fill in for a musician who injured his hand.
    • New gaming headset for my kid
      • JBL Quantum 200
    • Chromebook exchange
      • Bought a 2020 Acer Chromebook 314 Open Box on Ebay
      • This was to replace the 2018 Chromebook I bought a couple weeks ago that didn’t last 24 hours (wouldn’t charge)
        • That model had a puny barrel connection for power and seemed like the charge port had broken loose – newer model uses USB C (yay)
        • Bought for my kid who is special needs and it’s simple enough for him to use – it’s very similar in operation to his Android phone (Myself I’d be interested in used Thinkpad for a personal laptop).  But I actually really enjoy using the Chromebook
        • Some features 
          • 64GB storage
          • 4GB Ram
          • Celeron N4000
          • Battery lasts about 12 hours
          • Able to run linux apps as well as Android apps – available to launch just like any other ChromeOS app
          • Sync with android phone, smartlock etc
          • Family Link 
          • Stadia works well!
          • Have not yet tried Linux via Crouton yet but I will!

THE NEWS: 

  • Linux Mint Monthly News July 2020
    • Lots of donations as expected a month after a release
    • Most of the user base, a little more than half,  is on some version of 19
      • Most of those are on 19.3, just slightly edging out 20.
      • But, a little under a quarter of the user base are already on 20.
      • Coming in slightly under LM20 is LM 19.1, Tessa
      • Next in line is LM 18.3, Sylvia
    • The chart shows about half the Linux Mint users surveyed use the most recently or close-to-recent versions of Linux Mint.
    • However, the chart leaves out anybody that has changed their default Linux Mint Firefox start page, which is probably, a very sizable chunk.
  • <Moss>Gnome software memory bug: Rudra Saraswat of Ubuntu Unity writes: Thanks for reporting this issue [memory getting eaten up in UUE]. gnome-software seems to be the main culprit in this memory hogging issue. There is an open High priority issue in Launchpad for this. This started with 17.04, and the issue still exists in Focal Fossa. Even on fresh boot of Gnome, people have reported 500-600 MB of ram usage (some even reported 22 GB and above). Also, check – https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/gn5an6/gnome_software_memory_bug/ (This should be fixed in the 20.04.1 release.)
  • Ubuntu 20.04.1 released

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • Whoops! Intel “Misplaces” 20GB of Data
    • Till Kottman, an IT consultant that has helped break other data dumps in the past, linked to a trove of 20GB of Intel proprietary information named “Intel exconfidential Lake Platform Release ;)” 
    • Kottman says the anonymous source claims to have breached Intel’s security, while Intel claims this is false.
    • Here’s some of the chat log
      • Anon: They have a server hosted online by Akam[a]i CDN that wasn’t properly secure. After an internet wide nmap scan I found my target port open and went through a list of 370 possible servers based on details that nmap provided with an NSE script. {reconnaissance / port scanning}
      • Anon: I used a python script I made to probe different aspects of the server including username defaults and unsecure file/folder access. {enumeration}
      • Anon: The folders were just lying open if you could guess the name of one. Then when you were in the folder you could go back to root and just click into the other folders that you didn’t know the name of. {directory traversal attack}
      • Anon: Best of all, due to another misconfiguration, I could masqu[e]rade as any of their employees or make my own user. {privilege escalation}
      • Anon: Another funny thing is that on the zip files you may find password protected. Most of them use the password Intel123 or intel123.
    •  
    • None of that is confirmed, so grain of salt.
    • The initial posting was done in an effort to have people download the data dump and scour it for interesting or useful information.
    • If the titles are to be believed, there’ll be Intel ME flash tools (oh no), Intel dev and debugging tools, roadmaps, schematics, Intel Snowridge Process Simulator dev kit, among other things.
  • GRUB Breaks the Internet
    • Researchers at Eclypsium identified a buffer overflow that happens in GRUB2 as it goes through the grub.cfg file allowing an attacker to gain arbitrary code execution. Dubbed Boothole. For those playing along at home, that means game over.
    • What would happen is that an attacker would configure grub.cfg to run malware of her choosing before handing off the boot sequence to the OS.
    • If administrative privileges on the box are available to the attacker, this exploit can even be used on SecureBoot enabled systems without altering the vendor shim, which is the bit that actually boots the system while still being recognized as “secure”. While that makes this attack a bit harder, surely there are no shortage of additional attacks that can grant this privilege.
    • So here’s the rub. Every. Single. Version. Of. Linux. Needs. An. Update.
    • With the exception of one, unnamed, vendor.
    • What needs to happen to actually fix this once and for all
      • An update to GRUB2
      • Distros need to update their installers, shims and bootloaders
      • Microsoft needs to sign off on all of the new shims
      • Users and Admins need to be aware of this exploit and use only the newest, patched versions of install and recovery media
      • Firmware updates on affected hardware to prevent this attack

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, August 23, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC and 8 pm British Summer Time. Time conversions are available at Calculator.net should you need to determine your 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.
]]> full 4570 mintCast 341 – GRUB Breaks the Internet https://mintcast.org/mintcast-341-grub-breaks-the-internet/ Wed, 12 Aug 2020 04:11:34 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4563 Then, our news Linux Mint gets stats, Gnome squashes a memory bug, and Ubuntu hits its first 20.04 point release.
In security, Intel pulls an Intel
Download
]]>

Download

1:38 Wanderings
45:15 News
53:22 Check This Out
1:08:21 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been browsing, Joe’s been fixing docks, Moss has been slowly filling up his machine, and Tony Watts gets a new axe

Then, our news Linux Mint gets stats, Gnome squashes a memory bug, and Ubuntu hits its first 20.04 point release.

In security, Intel pulls an Intel

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Configuring GPU rendering on Firefox
      • In about:config , change “gfx.webrender.all” to “true”
      • Great on the desktop where I have a discrete card. Not so much on the laptop where it’s integrated and can get choppy at higher loads.
    • One thing I keep running into in other distributions besides Mint is odd color profiles in anything Chromium based. 
      • My eyes aren’t good enough to see if it’s absolutely everything, but I can certainly see a red hue on links which turn them purple.
      • This includes electron apps like Discord. The links and my profile picture look funny.
      • I can fix it in Chrome and Chromium by changing the Force Color Profile option in chrome://flags from “default” to “sRGB”
      • This doesn’t work in Electron apps cause I don’t know how to do this! Is there a command line addition? In flatpak? Curious and annoying.
    • Got a windscreen for my PodMic. 
      • I was noticing a lot of air in my P’s and B’s in the recordings. This should cut it down a little.
      • It was a non standard size, and since it already has an internal pop filter, there weren’t many choices. $12 later, I have one.
  • Moss
    • I added Manjaro Cinnamon to my Desktop PC last week, and last night I burned a USB stick with the latest Feren OS and installed it. I then reburned the stick for Gecko ROLLING, but it was too late to start another installation. And you have no idea how much willpower it took to not install it just before the show.. This means I have at least one variant of every base Linux distro except Red Hat and Slackware (unless you count that SuSE was the first variant of Slackware). I also do not have any independents such as Solus. I have not quite finished configuring everything I have installed, but I did make up a neat checklist to make sure I was getting everything. I will still have 2 free partitions on my desktop and 1 on my laptop… gotta get serious and do more hopping!
    • I got my new Raspberry Pi 4, a gift from Firecat which I previously mentioned, working with Ubuntu MATE 20.04. I even got Mullvad working on it. The only software I can’t load are SoftMaker Office (or FreeOffice) and PySolFC, neither of which apparently come in ARM64 versions. I discovered that the sound features of the Pi are a bit on the weak side; at no more than 80% of the normal loudness of my desktop, using the same powered speakers, the sound is a bit on the fuzzy side. I have ordered a USB sound “card” from eBay, and it should be here soon.
    • I also just received some new Bluetooth earbuds, AMZLAB Gmbh T16. It’s weird having something just “sit comfortably in your ear” and not be actually affixed with rubber earplugs. For the most part, they sit. I’ve had them drop out a couple times, and accidentally turn off when I pick them up. Still learning the ins and outs of these, but they seem cool. I decided to order them with the last of my covid-19 money when the nice LG headset Joe had sent me started having the right ear go in and out. And of course they are having trouble working with my desktop and Mumble, so I’m still wearing my old wired earbuds for this show.
    • My wife’s T430 messed up running Mint 20 Cinnamon. After trying a few things, I wound up replacing the SSD with another one and doing a clean install of Mint 20 MATE. I also attempted to put KDE neon on it, but that would not boot AND messed up the Mint boot. I put Ubuntu Unity in the second partition and ran Grub Customizer, and now Mint boots. That was 3 hours of a whole lot of not fun, but I got the job done.
    • I’m finding a few more jobs to apply for. I have yet to get an actual response except for the one two months ago, and they also had their own employment section for seniors but I haven’t heard from them either. There have been a few online tests, but I haven’t heard the results from those either; you rarely do, except for possibly getting an interview or a next step.
    • Ubuntu Unity 20.04.1 was released on the 6th. I did a complete new installation, and used the same partition I previously had installed Unity 20.04. I got everything set up the way I wanted it, and then returned control of GRUB to OpenMandriva, (because nobody does a beautiful GRUB screen like OM4). I immediately discovered that I could not boot into Ubuntu Unity but all my other distros worked. DUH. OM4 had not been updated for the new installation and was still looking for the old one. Back into OM4: sudo update-grub2. 
    • We finished reading Death Masks, the 5th book in the Dresden Files series, and have started the 6th, Blood Rites. Still don’t think it’s as good as Demon Squad, but we’re enjoying it.
  • Joe
    • I know Josh and I discussed it before but I am going to make my own macro keyboard
      • I have ordered a solderable 12 key keyboard and an arduino pro micro
      • I will set it up along with hotkeys to run programs that are already setup or to kick off bash scripts in a specific locations
    • Ended up with 12 of the Lenovo docks in the set of 10 that I ordered to see if I could fix.
      • All of them worked but 3 were missing some of the outer casing
        • Was able to 3D print some mounts that cover the missing parts and I will be keeping those for myself to use in future projects
      • This is probably also the right time of year to be selling with school about to start
      • Still need to buy some power supplies for them, which I think I can get for around 7 dollars a piece
      • That means the total cost will be around 9 dollars each and I am going to try and sell 9 of them for 30 dollars each (which is 10 dollars less than you can find them anywhere else)
    • Started playing around with X2Go screen mirroring instead of the usual spinning off a new desktop and I have to say that it works really well.
      • It used to be that you would have to install a whole new application specific for the task but now it is built into the server application and it works awesome.  
      • Using it with the 7140 in conjunction with the dock until I get some more HDMI cables
      • I do see some occasional latency but nothing insurmountable and only on the wifi in the garage.  I should put a wifi access point out there and see if that helps
    • Small problem with the 7130 and the 7140 with the dock.  They heat up and dont charge worth a darn.  Not sure what the issue is at this point.  I could try modding the dock so that it has a cooling fan in the back that blows against the tablet but that won’t fix the underlying issue.  Why is it heating up?  It doesn’t do that when connected to the keyboard dock or when connected to the other power supply. 
    • Borderlands 3 on mint with proton
      • Worked after reinstalling Vulkan
      • Slow to start but runs smooth after the first few seconds  *ACO 
    • Made it to book 12 in the Drizzt collection and decided to take a break so I don’t get burned out on it with 24 left to go
    • M.R. Forbes Ghost and Magic books
      • 4 book series
    • Son of the Blacksword books 1 and 2
    • Steve McHugh Death Unleashed one of the Hellequin novels
    • Stephen Blackmoore’s Eric Carter novel 1-3
    • Headphones fun
      • Found a really good deal on 6 broken Skullcandy Hesh 3’s which are not as good as the Crushers but have some really good things going for them.  Like passthrough power. And the fact that all the electronics are on one side.  Which makes them better for building my own bluetooth dongles
      • Already have two different types of female connectors that I can use but I will only do it to the ones that I cannot get back in good working order.
      • My other Hesh 3’s that I had sitting around ended up with a bloated battery but I was able to replace it with one from one of the 2 Crushers that I was not able to get working. The battery size was a little different but there was plenty of room to work and they are all the same 3.7 volts.
      • Someone asked me to fix a PS3 headset that their kid was using for school and I agreed.  Cechya 0080
        • Loaned them one of the Crushers with the 3D printed hinges and a couple of extra hinges just in case
        • Bad battery and some broken plastic around the mic and some occasional static on the mic
        • Replaced the battery easy enough with one with a lot more capacity.  It turns on but takes a super long time to charge fully
        • Used Gorilla Glue to reseat the plastic for the mic but my son then broke it again so I ended up gluing it to the side at full extension.  
  • Tony W
    • Beverage sampling
    • I gots me a NEW ELECTRIC GUITAR Y’ALL!!
    • GIGS!
      • Played at Ironshield Brewing Friday night.  New brewery right in my backyard, serving up German lagers and Belgian ales.  Lovely place, great crowd, and everyone really seemed to enjoy the music.  I met a couple of the owners.  Owners and staff were very pleased with the live music and I’ll be back again in September, and hopefully regularly after that.  
      • Played Lucky’s in Brookhaven (near Atlanta) Saturday night, last minute pickup gig to fill in for a musician who injured his hand.
    • New gaming headset for my kid
      • JBL Quantum 200
    • Chromebook exchange
      • Bought a 2020 Acer Chromebook 314 Open Box on Ebay
      • This was to replace the 2018 Chromebook I bought a couple weeks ago that didn’t last 24 hours (wouldn’t charge)
        • That model had a puny barrel connection for power and seemed like the charge port had broken loose – newer model uses USB C (yay)
        • Bought for my kid who is special needs and it’s simple enough for him to use – it’s very similar in operation to his Android phone (Myself I’d be interested in used Thinkpad for a personal laptop).  But I actually really enjoy using the Chromebook
        • Some features 
          • 64GB storage
          • 4GB Ram
          • Celeron N4000
          • Battery lasts about 12 hours
          • Able to run linux apps as well as Android apps – available to launch just like any other ChromeOS app
          • Sync with android phone, smartlock etc
          • Family Link 
          • Stadia works well!
          • Have not yet tried Linux via Crouton yet but I will!

THE NEWS: 

  • Linux Mint Monthly News July 2020
    • Lots of donations as expected a month after a release
    • Most of the user base, a little more than half,  is on some version of 19
      • Most of those are on 19.3, just slightly edging out 20.
      • But, a little under a quarter of the user base are already on 20.
      • Coming in slightly under LM20 is LM 19.1, Tessa
      • Next in line is LM 18.3, Sylvia
    • The chart shows about half the Linux Mint users surveyed use the most recently or close-to-recent versions of Linux Mint.
    • However, the chart leaves out anybody that has changed their default Linux Mint Firefox start page, which is probably, a very sizable chunk.
  • <Moss>Gnome software memory bug: Rudra Saraswat of Ubuntu Unity writes: Thanks for reporting this issue [memory getting eaten up in UUE]. gnome-software seems to be the main culprit in this memory hogging issue. There is an open High priority issue in Launchpad for this. This started with 17.04, and the issue still exists in Focal Fossa. Even on fresh boot of Gnome, people have reported 500-600 MB of ram usage (some even reported 22 GB and above). Also, check – https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/gn5an6/gnome_software_memory_bug/ (This should be fixed in the 20.04.1 release.)
  • Ubuntu 20.04.1 released

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • Whoops! Intel “Misplaces” 20GB of Data
    • Till Kottman, an IT consultant that has helped break other data dumps in the past, linked to a trove of 20GB of Intel proprietary information named “Intel exconfidential Lake Platform Release ;)” 
    • Kottman says the anonymous source claims to have breached Intel’s security, while Intel claims this is false.
    • Here’s some of the chat log
      • Anon: They have a server hosted online by Akam[a]i CDN that wasn’t properly secure. After an internet wide nmap scan I found my target port open and went through a list of 370 possible servers based on details that nmap provided with an NSE script. {reconnaissance / port scanning}
      • Anon: I used a python script I made to probe different aspects of the server including username defaults and unsecure file/folder access. {enumeration}
      • Anon: The folders were just lying open if you could guess the name of one. Then when you were in the folder you could go back to root and just click into the other folders that you didn’t know the name of. {directory traversal attack}
      • Anon: Best of all, due to another misconfiguration, I could masqu[e]rade as any of their employees or make my own user. {privilege escalation}
      • Anon: Another funny thing is that on the zip files you may find password protected. Most of them use the password Intel123 or intel123.
    •  
    • None of that is confirmed, so grain of salt.
    • The initial posting was done in an effort to have people download the data dump and scour it for interesting or useful information.
    • If the titles are to be believed, there’ll be Intel ME flash tools (oh no), Intel dev and debugging tools, roadmaps, schematics, Intel Snowridge Process Simulator dev kit, among other things.
  • GRUB Breaks the Internet
    • Researchers at Eclypsium identified a buffer overflow that happens in GRUB2 as it goes through the grub.cfg file allowing an attacker to gain arbitrary code execution. Dubbed Boothole. For those playing along at home, that means game over.
    • What would happen is that an attacker would configure grub.cfg to run malware of her choosing before handing off the boot sequence to the OS.
    • If administrative privileges on the box are available to the attacker, this exploit can even be used on SecureBoot enabled systems without altering the vendor shim, which is the bit that actually boots the system while still being recognized as “secure”. While that makes this attack a bit harder, surely there are no shortage of additional attacks that can grant this privilege.
    • So here’s the rub. Every. Single. Version. Of. Linux. Needs. An. Update.
    • With the exception of one, unnamed, vendor.
    • What needs to happen to actually fix this once and for all
      • An update to GRUB2
      • Distros need to update their installers, shims and bootloaders
      • Microsoft needs to sign off on all of the new shims
      • Users and Admins need to be aware of this exploit and use only the newest, patched versions of install and recovery media
      • Firmware updates on affected hardware to prevent this attack

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, August 23, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC and 8 pm British Summer Time. Time conversions are available at Calculator.net should you need to determine your 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.
]]> full 4563 mintCast 326 – One Byte Opposition (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-326-one-byte-opposition-mp3/ Wed, 15 Jan 2020 07:10:03 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4126 Then, in our news - Dell shows a new developer XPS 13 laptop at CES, there is a new enterprise Chromebook from Samsung and EA boots Linux gamers out of multiplayer Battlefield and more.
In Security - It’s time to update Firefox... again. And Cablehaunt spooks your modem.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Special Guest Alan Pope finds gold in the loft and plays 30+ year old games online, Leo wins at gifts, but fails at MicroK8s, Tony Hughes plays with Ubuntu Studio, more Matchbox cars, and donates some tech, Joe tries to repair a pebble, fixes more headphones and listens to lots of books, Tony Watts converts 8mm film to digital, plays with a dual monitor setup on his Thinkpad and reconfigures his recording setup.

Then, in our news – Dell shows a new developer XPS 13 laptop at CES, there is a new enterprise Chromebook from Samsung and EA boots Linux gamers out of multiplayer Battlefield and more.

In Security – It’s time to update Firefox… again. And Cablehaunt spooks your modem.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

  • Alan P
    • Found a bunch of old audio cassettes in the loft. Bought a cassette player off ebay to sample them into a PC (thinkpad, of course) and then feed them into an emulator if they’re computer stuff.
    • Some of them were programs that I’d written with a friend over 30 years ago.
    • Also played some old 8-bit games with my friend Martin Wimpress on our new twitch channel “8bitversus”. We decided to start playing games online when a friend in the Ubuntu Podcast telegram channel suggested it might be fun to watch. I was a massive sinclair spectrum fan, and he was a commodore 64 fan. In these streams we take turns choosing games and get the other person to play games on the other persons platform. It’s fun!
  • Leo
    • Got handed a desktop sans case from a friend that wasn’t using it anymore and was moving out of state. I’ve been wanting to build a new server for quite a while to get more into Docker and other enterprisey-type things and I saw it as a sign to forge ahead!
    • i5-6600k, 16GB 2400MHz RAM, ASUS Fancy Pants motherboard, and a 700W PSU.
    • Planning on moving the services I have at home, like Nextcloud, from snap and VMs to MicroK8s, but am having some issues with getting the Dashboard to listen outside on a local LAN subnet.
    • Making slow but steady progress on the manual Raspberry Pi Zero W motion camera setup.
  • Tony H
    • Having issues with Ubuntu Studio that I had installed on my Dell 7440 i7 it was reporting errors every time I started it. So I swapped out the M2 SSD with a 2.5” SSD and did a clean install to this drive. More problems, the new iso would not boot, so I ended up finding and using the original iso off my portable HDD to make a new bootable USB install drive this worked and I have a clean install of Ubuntu Studio on the Test laptop for January’s test distro. One issue I have found so far is not an Ubuntu issue but a Firefox issue, I can no longer copy my Firefox folder over to the new machine and have all my bookmarks as they were previously installed. Yes I have a FireFox account but it does not seem to be doing what it is supposed to and syncing bookmarks which is a pain when you have several Hundred of these that you would like to access. Previously it was a doddle to copy my FireFox over to a new install and it was one of the reasons I still use it. And yes my desktop PC is linked to the laptop as far as sync is concerned, just not doing it.
    • Recording the latest Distrohoppers Digest episode with Moss, it went out on Friday.
    • Continuing to play with Matchbox models, pick up a couple of bargains over the holiday but now it’s time to start actually restoring a few. Started on a Ford GT superfast restoration and have a couple of others on the go as well. I’ve ordered some replacement parts from one of the model suppliers here in the UK to enable me to restore some of the models with parts missing, but where possible I try to use parts from other models bought for this purpose. Yesterday I went to a collectors Fair / swap meet and bought a few things and did a couple of swaps, thinking next time I may get a table to sell a few things that I have surplus, in the collection.    
    • Going back to PC stuff, I made a donation of some Pi stuff and a couple of Laptops to a friend of my friend Les Pounder. Drew works in Egypt and is hoping to teach local children Computing, but has absolutely no equipment, or didn’t have until Les sent him some Pi’s and an old Lenovo x61s with Raspbian x86 installed so the children will be using the same software on all the machines. One of the PC’s I am sending is an x61s and also a Dell E6220 with some random Pi stuff and a couple of Pi’s to the cause. It’s easy to forget that having access to fairly cheap older hardware via various sources such as ebay is beyond the financial ability of many in much of the world, and for some even in the rich countries. A shout out to Zeb from Destination Linux who did a 24Hr marathon YouTube stream of Euro Truck simulator over the holiday to raise funds for Free Geek, in the US you can find them HERE. There are similar projects in the UK one is the WEEECharity based in the North West so if you want to help people in your own community bridge the digital divide consider a donation of unused and unloved hardware or bung them a small donation to help out. 
    • Finally joined the BDLL Euro show, realised at the last minute that it was the second Saturday of the month, so after a quick check in with the crew dropped out of the pre show mumble chat and jumped into the BDLL Zoom after installing the Zoom client as I was on the Ubuntu Studio laptop, after a bit of a glitch at the beginning with the hardware it went OK for the rest of the 2 hours. 
  • Joe
    • Someone gave me an equallogic ps6500  Toyam gave it to me.
    • I have no idea what to do with it
    • Honkeymagoo sent me a pair of pebble watches to work on
      • They both needed battery replacements
      • I failed miserably
      • Ruined one of the ribbon cables that go around the side on one
      • Did get the new batteries connected but was not able to get them to turn on
      • Other then the ribbon break i am not sure what I did wrong
      • One of the boards did get hot at one point but I reflowed the connection for the battery and it settled down
      • Interesting highlights.  I did have to solder a cable onto one of the battery boards.  Just used some wire from some ethernet cable that i had sitting around.  The cable is a little stiff for this application but when i checked the voltages it came out fine.
    • Jim Butchers Codex Alera
      • Good series.
      • Had to replace my copy because the old one was corrupt.  
      • Not sure if it is my hard drive with bad sectors or one of the ones that I used for a backup
    • The book of 5 rings
      • Interesting but because of the type of book and the fact that i am going over it with audio i think i am going to have to go through it several more times before i get the most out of it
    • Shattered Bonds, book 13 in the Jane Yellowrock series
      • Good book, not the easiest to follow.
      • Jumps around a bit and references some obscure aspects of the long series before it
    • Alex Verus novels again
      • Really good series.
      • Better after a couple of read throughs and getting in all the details
    • Also was able to get a python class in this morning.  We should start meeting weekly again. I think the next class that we are going to take may be centos
    • Working on old headphones again
      • Replaced the cable on my daughter’s cheap little headphones
      • Not even sure what brand they are just grabbed an old aux cable and replaced the broken cable
      • I have found that full cable replacements are sturdier and more reliable than patching the cable or replacing the jack
    • Fixed one set of 770’s by shortening the cable on one side
    • Fixed one set of 510’s by shortening the cable on one side and replacing the other
      • I had a problem with the replaced side
      • I tried shortening the original cable first but the sound was dim so i just did a replacement.  
      • Sound was still dim on that side so what I ended up doing was putting some flux down on the board and running my iron over a bunch of the connections while the device was on and playing music(do not try that) this reseated whatever was loose and fixed the sound issues
    • Fixed 2 sets of 810’s and a set of insignia’s by opening the speaker up and shortening the cable from that side
      • 1 more 810 to do that on
      • This is a very difficult fix because of the small size and the fact that it doesnt like to go back together if you get too harsh taking it apart
        • One of the 810s have another problem that i am not going to be able to fix but the insignias work well
          • The 810s i was able to get the earpiece working but it is much dimmer than the other side.  Next time i am setup i may try to reflow some of it 
          • But I think the problem is the connections on the spindle are wearing out so i may take it all the way apart and try to clean that up
          • The insignias work well for audio books but have terrible call quality in and out
        • The other 810 is working good
    • Full cable replacement on some earforce recon 50x’s that i found at goodwill for 4 dollars
      • Will probably also do the same for my other pair of 60p’s
      • This model has a separate line going to each ear one with the cables for the mic
      • The only issue that i have found is when the mic is in the correct position the left and right channels are reversed
    • Did a full band replacement on the z2’s.  Glad the replacement model worked.
      • Was not an exact match on the hinges but was close enough to the same size that i was able to get it together
      • Had to switch back to the standard sized ear cups because this band is narrower than the original
      • Much more clamping force but still comfortable
      • Used the earcups on the razer kraken z2’s
    • Attempted to replace the full cable from the board to the earpiece on a pair of 780’s but was plagued with problems and had to set it aside before i got frustrated while wielding a soldering iron. But as i mentioned before that is a difficult fix.
    • Picked up a pair of Meze 99 neos for 20 dollars
      • These headphones are 200 new on Amazon
      • Work perfectly and sound great
      • I am using a portable amp to push the headphones when i want a good sound
    •  Also picked up a pair of razer krakens for 15 dollars.
      • Had some problems where the left speaker was acting as the mic instead of the mic but was also pushing through sound
      • This had the side effect where everything that played on the headphones was transmitted in complete clarity back through the mic connection.
      • Attempted a cable fix directly at the 3.5mm jack but this did not work and left me somewhat confused as to the actual pinout of the device. Essentially when i had it hooked up right it was doing the same thing as before.
      • Cut the cable again above the included remote as that is the next likely place for an issue to arise. Hooked up a second cable from there and still got the same issue
      • Did a full cable replacement and while testing i found out that the mic is completely shot.
      • Works as a pair of headphones until i find another solution but i think i may mod an old mic from another system. 
      • Basically bypassed the surface mount board that is built in and hooked everything up direct except for the offside speaker
      • Sound good and are comfortable
      • I have a couple mono connectors that i might be able to use, i will need to look more closely 
      • Did not realize that it took proprietary ear cups but the ones i bought for the z2’s to add extra padding worked fine with the extra built in edge material.
      • Even covers up the hole from where i removed the mic 
    • Gave serious consideration to recording the whole thing and while i could have done it from my phone i had 2 problems
      • My phone is my bluetooth testing device
      • If I were planning on posting anywhere i would have had to refrain from cursing. And I was not about to do that.
    • For those of you that are wondering I go through a lot of bt headphones and my kids go through a lot of cans.  Dont think they are going to be using the meze’s though
    • Ordered some new tips for my soldering iron as the ones from microcenter dont quite fit
      • These do fit and work very well.  
    • My server is down after the most recent round of updates.  Not sure what is wrong yet. Need to put the video card back into the server. Which is annoying.  
  • Tony W
    • Miracle Morning 
      • First heard about it from User Error
      • S.A.V.E.R.S. explained – “The Miracle Morning”
      • More about habit and discipline than time spent or results 
      • Will stick with some variation of this morning routine
    • Music keeping me very busy (4 “gigs” in the last 4 days)
    • Converting old 8mm video using VLC
    • Thinkpad dual display conundrum
    •  Recording setup revisions
      • New boom stand (cheap Neewer)
      • Presonus Audiobox
      • Still using budget Behringer XLR mic
    • Have really been enjoying convenience of true wireless earbuds
      • Using Anker Liberty Soundcore buds that were a Christmas gift
      • Plex on the go is great for breaks

News:

Security Update:

  • Mozilla Patches Zero-Day Being Actively Exploited in 72
    • The Firefox team updated version 72 one day after initial release because of a Type Confusion flaw that is being exploited in the wild.
    • These flaws essentially do not look at some specific input and run whatever is given to it. This can cause issues when privileged data is requested.
    • Upgrade to Firefox 72.0.1 or Firefox ESR 68.4.1 to fix this issue.
  • Cable Haunt Vulnerability Affects Hundreds of Millions of Cable Modems
    • Users of cable modems with Broadcom chips are affected.
    • The spectrum analyzer on the Broadcom chip, typically used for debugging and testing purposes, can be leveraged to:
      • Change default DNS server
      • Conduct remote man-in-the-middle attacks
      • Hot-swap code or even the entire firmware
      • Upload, flash, and upgrade firmware silently
      • Disable ISP firmware upgrade
      • Change every config file and settings
      • Get and Set SNMP OID values
      • Change all associated MAC Addresses
      • Change serial numbers
      • Be exploited in botnet
    • ISPs or manufacturers can fix the issue with a firmware update. There’s not much you can do about it. However, the complexity of the attack is very high, so unless you’re under the microscope, you’ll likely not be affected.

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • 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 (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> full 1:43:27 4126 mintCast 326 – One Byte Opposition https://mintcast.org/mintcast-326-one-byte-opposition/ Wed, 15 Jan 2020 07:02:29 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4131 Then, in our news - Dell shows a new developer XPS 13 laptop at CES, there is a new enterprise Chromebook from Samsung and EA boots Linux gamers out of multiplayer Battlefield and more.
In Security - It’s time to update Firefox... again. And Cablehaunt spooks your modem.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Special Guest Alan Pope finds gold in the loft and plays 30+ year old games online, Leo wins at gifts, but fails at MicroK8s, Tony Hughes plays with Ubuntu Studio, more Matchbox cars, and donates some tech, Joe tries to repair a pebble, fixes more headphones and listens to lots of books, Tony Watts converts 8mm film to digital, plays with a dual monitor setup on his Thinkpad and reconfigures his recording setup.

Then, in our news – Dell shows a new developer XPS 13 laptop at CES, there is a new enterprise Chromebook from Samsung and EA boots Linux gamers out of multiplayer Battlefield and more.

In Security – It’s time to update Firefox… again. And Cablehaunt spooks your modem.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

  • Alan P
    • Found a bunch of old audio cassettes in the loft. Bought a cassette player off ebay to sample them into a PC (thinkpad, of course) and then feed them into an emulator if they’re computer stuff.
    • Some of them were programs that I’d written with a friend over 30 years ago.
    • Also played some old 8-bit games with my friend Martin Wimpress on our new twitch channel “8bitversus”. We decided to start playing games online when a friend in the Ubuntu Podcast telegram channel suggested it might be fun to watch. I was a massive sinclair spectrum fan, and he was a commodore 64 fan. In these streams we take turns choosing games and get the other person to play games on the other persons platform. It’s fun!
  • Leo
    • Got handed a desktop sans case from a friend that wasn’t using it anymore and was moving out of state. I’ve been wanting to build a new server for quite a while to get more into Docker and other enterprisey-type things and I saw it as a sign to forge ahead!
    • i5-6600k, 16GB 2400MHz RAM, ASUS Fancy Pants motherboard, and a 700W PSU.
    • Planning on moving the services I have at home, like Nextcloud, from snap and VMs to MicroK8s, but am having some issues with getting the Dashboard to listen outside on a local LAN subnet.
    • Making slow but steady progress on the manual Raspberry Pi Zero W motion camera setup.
  • Tony H
    • Having issues with Ubuntu Studio that I had installed on my Dell 7440 i7 it was reporting errors every time I started it. So I swapped out the M2 SSD with a 2.5” SSD and did a clean install to this drive. More problems, the new iso would not boot, so I ended up finding and using the original iso off my portable HDD to make a new bootable USB install drive this worked and I have a clean install of Ubuntu Studio on the Test laptop for January’s test distro. One issue I have found so far is not an Ubuntu issue but a Firefox issue, I can no longer copy my Firefox folder over to the new machine and have all my bookmarks as they were previously installed. Yes I have a FireFox account but it does not seem to be doing what it is supposed to and syncing bookmarks which is a pain when you have several Hundred of these that you would like to access. Previously it was a doddle to copy my FireFox over to a new install and it was one of the reasons I still use it. And yes my desktop PC is linked to the laptop as far as sync is concerned, just not doing it.
    • Recording the latest Distrohoppers Digest episode with Moss, it went out on Friday.
    • Continuing to play with Matchbox models, pick up a couple of bargains over the holiday but now it’s time to start actually restoring a few. Started on a Ford GT superfast restoration and have a couple of others on the go as well. I’ve ordered some replacement parts from one of the model suppliers here in the UK to enable me to restore some of the models with parts missing, but where possible I try to use parts from other models bought for this purpose. Yesterday I went to a collectors Fair / swap meet and bought a few things and did a couple of swaps, thinking next time I may get a table to sell a few things that I have surplus, in the collection.    
    • Going back to PC stuff, I made a donation of some Pi stuff and a couple of Laptops to a friend of my friend Les Pounder. Drew works in Egypt and is hoping to teach local children Computing, but has absolutely no equipment, or didn’t have until Les sent him some Pi’s and an old Lenovo x61s with Raspbian x86 installed so the children will be using the same software on all the machines. One of the PC’s I am sending is an x61s and also a Dell E6220 with some random Pi stuff and a couple of Pi’s to the cause. It’s easy to forget that having access to fairly cheap older hardware via various sources such as ebay is beyond the financial ability of many in much of the world, and for some even in the rich countries. A shout out to Zeb from Destination Linux who did a 24Hr marathon YouTube stream of Euro Truck simulator over the holiday to raise funds for Free Geek, in the US you can find them HERE. There are similar projects in the UK one is the WEEECharity based in the North West so if you want to help people in your own community bridge the digital divide consider a donation of unused and unloved hardware or bung them a small donation to help out. 
    • Finally joined the BDLL Euro show, realised at the last minute that it was the second Saturday of the month, so after a quick check in with the crew dropped out of the pre show mumble chat and jumped into the BDLL Zoom after installing the Zoom client as I was on the Ubuntu Studio laptop, after a bit of a glitch at the beginning with the hardware it went OK for the rest of the 2 hours. 
  • Joe
    • Someone gave me an equallogic ps6500  Toyam gave it to me.
    • I have no idea what to do with it
    • Honkeymagoo sent me a pair of pebble watches to work on
      • They both needed battery replacements
      • I failed miserably
      • Ruined one of the ribbon cables that go around the side on one
      • Did get the new batteries connected but was not able to get them to turn on
      • Other then the ribbon break i am not sure what I did wrong
      • One of the boards did get hot at one point but I reflowed the connection for the battery and it settled down
      • Interesting highlights.  I did have to solder a cable onto one of the battery boards.  Just used some wire from some ethernet cable that i had sitting around.  The cable is a little stiff for this application but when i checked the voltages it came out fine.
    • Jim Butchers Codex Alera
      • Good series.
      • Had to replace my copy because the old one was corrupt.  
      • Not sure if it is my hard drive with bad sectors or one of the ones that I used for a backup
    • The book of 5 rings
      • Interesting but because of the type of book and the fact that i am going over it with audio i think i am going to have to go through it several more times before i get the most out of it
    • Shattered Bonds, book 13 in the Jane Yellowrock series
      • Good book, not the easiest to follow.
      • Jumps around a bit and references some obscure aspects of the long series before it
    • Alex Verus novels again
      • Really good series.
      • Better after a couple of read throughs and getting in all the details
    • Also was able to get a python class in this morning.  We should start meeting weekly again. I think the next class that we are going to take may be centos
    • Working on old headphones again
      • Replaced the cable on my daughter’s cheap little headphones
      • Not even sure what brand they are just grabbed an old aux cable and replaced the broken cable
      • I have found that full cable replacements are sturdier and more reliable than patching the cable or replacing the jack
    • Fixed one set of 770’s by shortening the cable on one side
    • Fixed one set of 510’s by shortening the cable on one side and replacing the other
      • I had a problem with the replaced side
      • I tried shortening the original cable first but the sound was dim so i just did a replacement.  
      • Sound was still dim on that side so what I ended up doing was putting some flux down on the board and running my iron over a bunch of the connections while the device was on and playing music(do not try that) this reseated whatever was loose and fixed the sound issues
    • Fixed 2 sets of 810’s and a set of insignia’s by opening the speaker up and shortening the cable from that side
      • 1 more 810 to do that on
      • This is a very difficult fix because of the small size and the fact that it doesnt like to go back together if you get too harsh taking it apart
        • One of the 810s have another problem that i am not going to be able to fix but the insignias work well
          • The 810s i was able to get the earpiece working but it is much dimmer than the other side.  Next time i am setup i may try to reflow some of it 
          • But I think the problem is the connections on the spindle are wearing out so i may take it all the way apart and try to clean that up
          • The insignias work well for audio books but have terrible call quality in and out
        • The other 810 is working good
    • Full cable replacement on some earforce recon 50x’s that i found at goodwill for 4 dollars
      • Will probably also do the same for my other pair of 60p’s
      • This model has a separate line going to each ear one with the cables for the mic
      • The only issue that i have found is when the mic is in the correct position the left and right channels are reversed
    • Did a full band replacement on the z2’s.  Glad the replacement model worked.
      • Was not an exact match on the hinges but was close enough to the same size that i was able to get it together
      • Had to switch back to the standard sized ear cups because this band is narrower than the original
      • Much more clamping force but still comfortable
      • Used the earcups on the razer kraken z2’s
    • Attempted to replace the full cable from the board to the earpiece on a pair of 780’s but was plagued with problems and had to set it aside before i got frustrated while wielding a soldering iron. But as i mentioned before that is a difficult fix.
    • Picked up a pair of Meze 99 neos for 20 dollars
      • These headphones are 200 new on Amazon
      • Work perfectly and sound great
      • I am using a portable amp to push the headphones when i want a good sound
    •  Also picked up a pair of razer krakens for 15 dollars.
      • Had some problems where the left speaker was acting as the mic instead of the mic but was also pushing through sound
      • This had the side effect where everything that played on the headphones was transmitted in complete clarity back through the mic connection.
      • Attempted a cable fix directly at the 3.5mm jack but this did not work and left me somewhat confused as to the actual pinout of the device. Essentially when i had it hooked up right it was doing the same thing as before.
      • Cut the cable again above the included remote as that is the next likely place for an issue to arise. Hooked up a second cable from there and still got the same issue
      • Did a full cable replacement and while testing i found out that the mic is completely shot.
      • Works as a pair of headphones until i find another solution but i think i may mod an old mic from another system. 
      • Basically bypassed the surface mount board that is built in and hooked everything up direct except for the offside speaker
      • Sound good and are comfortable
      • I have a couple mono connectors that i might be able to use, i will need to look more closely 
      • Did not realize that it took proprietary ear cups but the ones i bought for the z2’s to add extra padding worked fine with the extra built in edge material.
      • Even covers up the hole from where i removed the mic 
    • Gave serious consideration to recording the whole thing and while i could have done it from my phone i had 2 problems
      • My phone is my bluetooth testing device
      • If I were planning on posting anywhere i would have had to refrain from cursing. And I was not about to do that.
    • For those of you that are wondering I go through a lot of bt headphones and my kids go through a lot of cans.  Dont think they are going to be using the meze’s though
    • Ordered some new tips for my soldering iron as the ones from microcenter dont quite fit
      • These do fit and work very well.  
    • My server is down after the most recent round of updates.  Not sure what is wrong yet. Need to put the video card back into the server. Which is annoying.  
  • Tony W
    • Miracle Morning 
      • First heard about it from User Error
      • S.A.V.E.R.S. explained – “The Miracle Morning”
      • More about habit and discipline than time spent or results 
      • Will stick with some variation of this morning routine
    • Music keeping me very busy (4 “gigs” in the last 4 days)
    • Converting old 8mm video using VLC
    • Thinkpad dual display conundrum
    •  Recording setup revisions
      • New boom stand (cheap Neewer)
      • Presonus Audiobox
      • Still using budget Behringer XLR mic
    • Have really been enjoying convenience of true wireless earbuds
      • Using Anker Liberty Soundcore buds that were a Christmas gift
      • Plex on the go is great for breaks

News:

Security Update:

  • Mozilla Patches Zero-Day Being Actively Exploited in 72
    • The Firefox team updated version 72 one day after initial release because of a Type Confusion flaw that is being exploited in the wild.
    • These flaws essentially do not look at some specific input and run whatever is given to it. This can cause issues when privileged data is requested.
    • Upgrade to Firefox 72.0.1 or Firefox ESR 68.4.1 to fix this issue.
  • Cable Haunt Vulnerability Affects Hundreds of Millions of Cable Modems
    • Users of cable modems with Broadcom chips are affected.
    • The spectrum analyzer on the Broadcom chip, typically used for debugging and testing purposes, can be leveraged to:
      • Change default DNS server
      • Conduct remote man-in-the-middle attacks
      • Hot-swap code or even the entire firmware
      • Upload, flash, and upgrade firmware silently
      • Disable ISP firmware upgrade
      • Change every config file and settings
      • Get and Set SNMP OID values
      • Change all associated MAC Addresses
      • Change serial numbers
      • Be exploited in botnet
    • ISPs or manufacturers can fix the issue with a firmware update. There’s not much you can do about it. However, the complexity of the attack is very high, so unless you’re under the microscope, you’ll likely not be affected.

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • 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 (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> full 1:43:27 4131 mintCast 287 – Debian 9 https://mintcast.org/mintcast-287-debian-9/ Mon, 21 May 2018 17:26:19 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3377 287]

Download

Bi-weekly Wanderings:

  • Isaac is MIA with a flooded basement.
  • Rob’s been playing Starfinder (still) and wondering about kernel releases and versions on his LMDE box.

News:

Linux Innards:

  • Rob looks at Debian 9, and the various desktops available.

Vibrations from the Ether:

  • Favorite quote (from Brad A): “There used to be an old saying that “using DEC Unix is like driving a nail with your forehead. Eventually you will get somewhere, but not without a headache and some blood.” Most of the distros you have tried fall into this category.“

Check this out!

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

  • Send us your bumper or intro or outro music.

More Information:

Hosts: Rob and Isaac
Live Stream every other Sunday 2:00 p.m.(Central): mintcast.org/livestream

Contact Us:

More Linux Mint info: website, blog, forums, community

Credits:

Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). Podcast bumpers provided by Oscar.

]]> full 3377 mintCast 233 – Give it Away https://mintcast.org/mintcast-233-give-it-away/ Fri, 09 Oct 2015 01:46:26 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3022 233]

Download

News:

  • Monthly News – September 2015 (blog.linuxmint.com)
  • Google Chromebooks: The most popular classroom computing device (zdnet.com)
  • The Linux Foundation Says You Should Install Linux on Your Chromebook (softpedia.com)
  • Debian dropping the Linux Standard Base (lwn.net)
  • The Linux Kernel to Celebrate Its 24th Birthday (softpedia.com)
  • Celebrating 5 years of LibreOffice (opensource.com)

Main Topic: Isaac Carter on Giving Computers Away

Websites:

Tip:

  • Cinnamon’s Hot Corners (zdnet.com)
    • Isaac wanted to remind everybody about “Hot Corners”. He’s been using them more and more lately.  Just something that’s always been there that he knew about and never used, but since using them more he can’t live without them.

Pre-Show Music:

  • Playlist – “Traffic Jam” by Jamhippo  (jamendo.com)

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, and Joe
Live Stream every other Sunday 2:00 p.m.(Central): mintcast.org/livestream

Contact Us:

More Linux Mint info: website, blog, forums, community

Credits:

Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). Podcast bumpers provided by Oscar.

]]> full 3022 mintCast 224 – Net Neutrality with Steve Titch https://mintcast.org/mintcast-224-net-neutrality-with-steve-titch/ Fri, 22 May 2015 02:17:58 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2970 224]

Download

News:

Main Topic: Net Neutrality, Title II, and the FCC with Steve Titch

  • Internet providers are opening a new front in the net neutrality fight (washingtonpost.com)
  • Why net neutrality rules have angered some small Internet providers (arstechnica.com)
  • New Internet regulations are already hurting the economy (thehill.com)
  • Network Neutrality’s Watershed Moment (stevetitch.com)

Website:

Tip:

  • A server health monitoring script from Tecmint.com
    Here we have written a shell Script that do not aims to automate the task of a typical system admin, but it may be helpful at places and specially for those newbies who can get most of the information they require about their System, Network, Users, Load, Ram, host, Internal IP, External IP, Uptime, etc.
    http://www.tecmint.com/linux-server-health-monitoring-script/
  • Linux Mint 17.1 for Acer C720
    Linux Mint 17.1 with Linux Kernel 3.18 and the latest fixes for the Acer C720.
    Tested on 2 GB Acer C720 & 4 GB Acer C720’s with Intel Celeron 2955U.
    http://www.distroshare.com/distros/get/57/

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, and Joe
Live Stream every other Sunday 2:00 p.m.(Central): mintcast.org/livestream

Contact Us:

More Linux Mint info: website, blog, forums, community

Credits:

Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). Podcast bumpers provided by Oscar.

]]> full 2970 mintCast 219 – Bodhi Linux and Chromebooks https://mintcast.org/mintcast-219-bodhi-linux-and-chromebooks/ Wed, 25 Feb 2015 02:18:03 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2939 219] Download

News:

Main Topic: Bodhi Linux and Chromebooks

Website:

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, and Joe
Live Stream every other Sunday 2:00 p.m.(Central): mintcast.org/livestream

Contact Us:

More Linux Mint info: website, blog, forums, community

Credits:

Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). Podcast bumpers provided by Oscar. 

]]> full 2939 mintCast 191 – A Look at Chromebooks https://mintcast.org/mintcast-191-a-look-at-chromebooks/ Fri, 31 Jan 2014 00:03:36 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2756 191] Download

News:

  • Research Shows Chromebooks Doing Very Well in the Education Market– As we’ve noted multiple times, though, Chromebooks are finding a home in the education market, thanks to their low prices and their reliance on free applications and resources that reside in the cloud. Now, fresh data is out showing that Chromebooks represent nearly a fifth of all portable computer sales to schools. That’s nothing to shake a stick at. (ostatic.com)
  • Elementary OS takes over development of Shotwell – The team behind the elementary OS Linux distribution has taken over development responsibilities for the photo management software Shotwell. And that is awesome. (networkworld.com)
  • Post Subject: The end of Linux Basix – After many discussions over the past year I have decided to archive the linuxbasix.com site. Some of you may not know but I am to owner of the site. It was started by Steve (Door), Russ, John and myself. We have all decided that it is time to retire Linux Basix as a podcast. (linuxbasix.com)
  • Voting Proposed For Debian Jessie’s Init System – Debian technical committee member Bdale Garbee has called for a vote on what should be the init system used by Debian Jessie, the next release. The proposed voting is a first-step to a longer-term solution: it isn’t voting about what Debian should switch to for the foreseeable future but what will they commit to for the next release. (phoronix.com)
  • “Password” unseated by “123456” on SplashData’s annual “Worst Passwords” list – The 2013 list of worst passwords, influenced by postings from the Adobe breach, demonstrates the importance of not basing passwords on the application or website being accessed. (splashdata.com)

Main Topic: A look at Chromebooks

  • Put Bodhi Linux on your ARM based Chromebook (blogspot.com)
  • Use crouton to run Linux on your Chromebook (itworld.com)

Websites:

Tips:

Pre-show music this week was:

  • Yesterday’s Conversation by Angus Wallace (Jamendo.com)

Podcast Announcements:

  • Linux in the Ham Shack at Hamvention 2014 Indiegogo campaign. (indiegogo.com)

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, Joe
Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org/livestream
Contact Us:

More Linux Mint info: website, blog, forums, community

Credits:
Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast bumpers were provided by Oscar.

]]> full 2756 mintCast 190 – A Buncha News https://mintcast.org/mintcast-190-a-buncha-news/ Fri, 24 Jan 2014 02:54:07 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2749 190] Download

News:

  • The 5 first Linux Mint releases are coming back from Oblivion! The following ISOs were added to the archive and are being synced to all our mirrors: Linux Mint 1.0 BETA-007 “Ada”, Linux Mint 2.0 “Barbara”, Linux Mint 2.1 “Bea” Linux Mint 2.2 “Bianca”, available with GNOME, KDE and as a “Light” edition. Linux Mint 3.0 “Cassandra” (segfault.linuxmint.com)
  • Net neutrality is half-dead: Court strikes down FCC’s anti-blocking rules The Federal Communication Commission’s net neutrality rules were partially struck down today by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (arstechnica.com)
  • Losing Net Neutrality Is The Symptom, Not The Problem: Now Is The Time To Focus On Real Competition For nearly a decade we’ve been trying to point out that the entire fight over net neutrality is something of a red herring. (techdirt.com)
  • UK’s security branch says Ubuntu most secure end-user OS CESG, the UK government’s arm that assesses operating systems and software security, has published its findings for ‘End User Device’ operating systems. The most secure of the lot? Ubuntu 12.04. (zdnet.com)
  • Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to Implement the Bleeding Edge GRUB 2.02 Beta 2 Boot Loader Ubuntu distributions didn’t always come with the latest GRUB, but Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) might implement the most recent version, GRUB 2.02 Beta 2. (softpedia.com)
  • Major setbacks for two new smartphone OSs, Tizen and Ubuntu Touch Looks like there won’t be any big new challengers for iOS and Android this year, after Japan’s NTT DoCoMo shelved plans for a Tizen launch and Canonical conceded that no big manufacturers will release Ubuntu phones this year. (gigaom.com)
  • Debian May Be Leaning Towards Systemd Over Upstart While no official decision has been reached yet, it looks like Debian’s technical committee may be leaning in favor of using systemd as the default init system over Upstart or other alternatives. (phoronix.com)
  • Spotify weighs in, votes for systemd on Debian Spotify, the commercial music streaming service, runs Debian on their servers. Spotify has more than 5,000 physical servers and over 1,000 virtual machines and they’re all running Debian GNU/Linux. (phoronix.com)
  • CentOS Project Leader Karanbir Singh Opens Up on Red Hat Deal In the 10 years since the CentOS project was launched there has been no board of directors, or legal team, or commercial backing. (linux.com)
  • Valve working on an OpenGL debugger that it will open-source Valve’s VOGL OpenGL debugger/tracer for Linux will be completely open-source and they will welcome community contributions to this tool aimed at Linux game developers. (phoronix.com) (phoronix.com)

Website:

  • Comprehensive list of software for Linux A big, big list of all the software featured on Datamation’s open source software guides. This year’s list is the longest ever with 1,180 projects in 143 different categories from Accessibility to Wine and Beer. (datamation.com)

Tip:

  • Using init.d Scripts to Execute Commands at Start-Up This tutorial will show you how to automatically execute commands at the system start-up using the standard init.d directory and the default runlevel. These scripts are called init scripts or start-up scripts, they are used to start and stop services and they will be executed with root privileges. (tuxarena.com)

Pre-show music this week was:

  • Yesterday’s Conversation by Angus Wallace (Jamendo.com)

Podcast Announcements:

  • Linux in the Ham Shack at Hamvention 2014 Allow Linux in the Ham Shack to set up an educational booth at the Dayton Hamvention 2014. (indiegogo.com)

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, Joe
Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org/livestream
Contact Us:

More Linux Mint info: website, blog, forums, community

Credits:
Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast bumpers were provided by Oscar.

]]> full 2749 mintCast 159: Catching up with James https://mintcast.org/mintcast-159-catching-up-with-james/ Fri, 10 May 2013 00:21:33 +0000 http://www.mintcast.org/?p=2443 Listen: mintcast159.mp3 or mintcast159.ogg

News:

  • The Mint development team launches a new blog. (Segfault.Linuxmint.com )
  • Debian 7.0 Wheezy is released. (Debian.org )
  • SolydXK gets added to the DistroWatch database. (Ostatic.com )
  • Lightworks Linux public beta is finally available for download. (Webupd8.com )
  • Iron Penguin: First open-source “Iron Man” suit within reach? (ZDNet.com )

The Main Topic:

  • Catching up with James.

Featured Website: (Thanks to Merely Jim)

Tip: (Thanks to Beardy Jesse)

  • The tree command. It’s a really simple command that allows you to see a tree type view of a folder hierarchy. I use it if I’m unsure of where a file/folder is, as it saves constantly having to use the ‘ls’ command in every folder to find a sub-sub-sub directory. I’d suggest limiting the depth with the -L flag because if you use it in your root directory, as it can return far too many results to be useful!

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, James

Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org

Contact Us:

More Linux Mint info: website, blog, forums, community

Credits: Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast’s bumpers were provided by Oscar.

]]> full 2443