Chromecast – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Wed, 11 Nov 2020 04:37:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Chromecast – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false episodic CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast Chromecast – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 mintCast 347 – For the Halibut (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-347-for-the-halibut-mp3/ Wed, 04 Nov 2020 17:46:45 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4743 Then, in our news, Linux Mint gives us an update, Ubuntu and Fedora both get released, XDA has a phone now, and Microsoft Edges into the Linux browser market
In security, Chromium blocks annoyances and fixes a font rendering flaw, and Wordpress fixes some bad ones
Download
]]>

Download

2:53 Wanderings
1:13:18 The News
1:43:29 Security
1:47:39 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I pop a kernel, Bo gets refreshed, Josh keeps his chameleon alive, Tony Hughes becomes a hermit, Moss bites into another distro, Joe gets it HANDled, and Tony Watts does the upgrade dance

Then, in our news, Linux Mint gives us an update, Ubuntu and Fedora both get released, XDA has a phone now, and Microsoft Edges into the Linux browser market

In security, Chromium blocks annoyances and fixes a font rendering flaw, and WordPress fixes some bad ones

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Upgraded to Ubuntu 20.10’s 5.8 kernel in Linux Mint. My 5700XT’s performance has increased! Yay!
    • Playing with Kubuntu 20.10 which also has kernel 5.8.
    • Recording this on an AMD A10-7870K with 16GB RAM and all my other audio gear. If something goes wrong today, I’m gonna blame that…
    • Last episode I mentioned that World of Warcraft was crashing in Wine from Lutris. Fixed this by moving from the Wine 5.7 TkG version that Lutris provides to Wine Staging 5.19. That upgraded to 5.20 recently as well.
    • Chromium got upgrades! It’s now part of the Linux Mint repo.
cd ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Baldurs/Gate/3/Launcher/

mv LariLauncher.exe LariLauncher.exe.old

ln -s ../bin/bg3.exe LariLauncher.exe

cp ./*.dll ../bin/
  • Josh
    • My openSUSE samba server is still alive and kicking!
    • After seeing the error of my ways with btrfs I decided to reinstall Mint on my desktop pc.
    • Linux Mint gaming is broken on my newly installed OS #DualMonitorWoes.
    • Testing out Edge on Linux after hearing a ton of good feedback about it.
  • Tony H
    • So the last few weeks have not been brilliant health wise, I missed the last recording as I was ill with acid reflux, which when it flares up really knocks me for 6. At the moment still not a 100% but getting a little better.
    • As we go on air I am currently in a 3 day of shielding with my wife who has to go into hospital for a small operation on Tuesday, luckily this is a day procedure or the lockdown would have been 2 weeks, so I can not leave the house until Tuesday at 6.40am when I take her into the hospital for the operation and even then I can not be there to support her during the process. Blast Covid. On a positive note her covid test came back negative, so the opp can go ahead as planned.
    • One of the downsides of my health issues is it drains me of energy and I’ve not felt like doing much in the way of modeling or preparing my review of KaOS for Distrohoppers that we are hoping to record this coming week, but I will have something to say but not as comprehensive a review as I would like.
  • Moss
    • I had all my teeth removed and they are currently covered by temporary dentures, which is why I’m talking funny right now. This will be going on for some time, but the show must go on!
    • We’re getting ready to record Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 017, presumably the day after this episode hits your podcatcher. This will be another adventure in diction. On another note, Tony has noticed that some of our download numbers have gone backwards, so we should all donate to Archive and ask for our downloads back.
    • I just installed PCLinuxOS on Friday. I was amazed at how easily it went this time, and I’m still reeling from being able to use APT to install RPM packages. The installer has a little catch: it will not tell you what distros are installed on which partitions. This is why I have not yet installed it on my desktop, I didn’t identify my available partitions prior to attempting the install and was not brave enough to take a guess and soldier on.
    • I also installed Feren OS again, and found that they have yet to update the base to 20.04. I looked it up and it is promised for November. I may not spend much time working with Feren until the upgrade.
    • My work has been sporadic, and no paychecks have been received for months. We’re down to our last $30. But Social Security comes tomorrow, and those missing paychecks should come some day. I have a new job on the side, selling a line of products to raise money to house and employ homeless women across the country. I’ve worked with this promoter before, and while it hasn’t always worked out well, it’s not from lack of trying.
    • We finally finished Dead Beat and are working on the next book, Proven Guilty, more slowly now that I can’t talk well.
  • Joe
    • Got a couple of dirt cheap broken handhelds.  I had a lot of fun with it.  So far I have gotten
      • 2 PSP 1001s that did not power on
      • One 3DS XL old that did not power on
      • One DS Lite
    • The NDS Lite needed the lower display replaced
      • This was not a hard fix but when I was putting it back together I noticed that the ribbon cable for the digitizer was a bit  frayed.  I put it back together as best I could any way
      • It seemed to work.  Both screens came on and displayed the need for touchscreen calibration.  It died as soon as I touched the screen and would not power back on.
      • I took it apart again and I saw that the leads were lifted off the ribbon cable
      • I hope that replacing the touchscreen will fix the problem but I know that the board might also be fried like bacon
      • Only one way to find out.
      • It was also acting like the battery was bad …
      • So I replaced the battery and it would still not turn on
      • I attempted to replace the touchpad but it was a little more delicate than I am and now the thing is good for parts but i am fairly sure that i had already messed up the motherboard anyway
    • The 3DS XL was supposedly broken and would not turn on.  But I replaced the battery and hooked it up to power and it turned right on with no issues. I did have to bypass the parental controls which was super easy and I did notice that the joystick felt a little stiff but that cleared up after some time.
      • I was also able to get a multicart off eBay for pretty cheap and it works like the R4 card is supposed to and allowed me to run all the games that were on the cart.
      • It also allowed me to replace the Micro SD card that was in the cart and after I copied over the control files I was able to double the memory of the SD card and add in some of the other roms that I have sitting around.  I was also able to install one of the Genesis emulators and one of the NES emulators to play some of those roms that I own.  As well as adding many of the DS games.  Although I could not play 3DS games from there.
      • I enjoyed the Genesis emulator from there but it would not allow me to switch to full screen or view the whole image at once.  It was not insurmountable but it did take away from the immersion of the game
      • So I went ahead and set up homebrew on the device (everything was done from Linux). This was a long and tedious process but in the end I was able to set up a second 32 gb micro SD card on it with a different Genesis emulator that did allow me to see the whole image and to stretch it to full screen.
      • This also allowed me to set up and remove 3DS games (all legally obtained) and to add custom theming to the device.  I really like how Shovel Knight looked and played on the device and I love playing old school Shadowrun on it.  The Sega version and I have been playing a lot of it
      • So now I can play 3DS games and Sega games from one card and I can play NES, SNES and DS games from the other card.  I suppose I could also set up some Atari emulation if I wanted and get some Centipede or Space Command or Star Raider going.
      • Plus with the DS card that goes into the top I can set up multiple micro SD cards for different setups and just swap them out as needed with as many games as I want.
    • Also ordered 2 PSP 1001’s for a decent price for parts not working
      • One of them had an issue with the battery not wanting to charge but I was able to get the battery working again with a bit of work
      • Also had an issue with the front buttons where the select key was stuck
      • The other one looked good but had a lot of issues and you could tell that it had been apart several times and had pieces removed. Not sure if the screen is good or not but it was not connected.  The power light does come on and batteries do charge when hooked up to it so some decent parts.
      • But other than the screen being completely disconnected the board on the right hand side was completely loose as the retention pins were broken off.  The UMD door was not seated all the way and the latch for it was missing the spring so had to be removed manually
      • But it did have a good set of buttons on the bottom which I was able to move over to the other device to get it working properly.  However this 8 dollar part does not make up for the cost of the device that I paid so I am a little disappointed and may try to troubleshoot it further anyway or simply test parts from it on other devices.
      • But yeah, one of them is working perfectly which makes me happy.  It is running older software so I am going to do the update today.
      • The device is very old so it will not do WPA2 and I am not going to set up an insecure network device so I have to do the updates and mods from the internal memory
        • Not that big of a deal but it is something that should be noted
      • Have done some gaming with the genesis emulator and while it does not feel as refined as the 3DS emulator it still worked well and looked good
      • I also looked up and found the methods that most people were using to transfer movies onto the psp and most of that was using applications that only ran in windows and were outdated.  But looking at those applications I could see that most of them were front ends for ffmpeg.  So I looked for and found a terminal command that worked.
      • ffmpeg -y -i INPUTFILE -flags +bitexact -vcodec libx264 -profile:v baseline -level 3.0 -s 480×272 -r 29.97 -b:v 384k -acodec aac -b:a 96k -ar 48000 -f psp -strict -2 OUTPUTFILE.MP4
      • I am still looking for an up to date way to play PSX games on the PSP.  The old methods were also program based and many of those programs are not available any more.  Because I have many more PS1 games on file than I do PSP because I actually own a couple of different PS1s
    • My main server/garage computer died.  Trouble shooting the issues for that was not what I would call fun.  I was able to narrow the problem down to one of the big 3 which is never good
      • I would go into detail on all the issues and the ways that I tested but it gets tedious
      • Lets just say when one of the big 3 starts going but doesnt brick hard it can lead to some interesting faults that are hard to track down
      • But since I don’t have any other computers that use that chipset or ddr4 RAM I have no other way to test than to purchase parts and swap.  So I have started with RAM.  At least with RAM if it is bad then I have fixed the issue and if it is good and something else is bad I can still use the RAM
      • After that I have to guess but when I am done I will be one or two parts short of having a second complete computer.
      • Financially this has come at a terrible time but I will get it fixed.  If I had known that it was going to break then I would not have started working on old handhelds
      • But it looks like replacing the RAM has worked for now.  Hopefully that is actually the problem and it is solved now
      • I still need to swing by Micro Center and see if they will replace the bad RAM sticks which would bring me up to 32 gig in my server
  • Tony W
    • Redoing the floor in my basement due to my poor choices in life
    • Did the upgrade to next LTS on my server and it was uneventful
    • Chromecast Audio on PA system = WIN
    • Upgrade to Nest Wifi + add’l network switch
    • Chromecast with Google TV, YouTube TV ($65/mo!!!)
    • Magnetic charging cables are awesome
    • LineageOS updating
    • Have been using my Dell 7130 more
    • Sometimes Linux is just better…
      • My old school audio setup works flawlessly in Linux and is NO FUN in Windows

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Londoner for our time zone link
  • Owen Peery for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 4743 mintCast 347 – For the Halibut https://mintcast.org/mintcast-347-for-the-halibut/ Wed, 04 Nov 2020 17:10:14 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4737 Then, in our news, Linux Mint gives us an update, Ubuntu and Fedora both get released, XDA has a phone now, and Microsoft Edges into the Linux browser market
In security, Chromium blocks annoyances and fixes a font rendering flaw, and Wordpress fixes some bad ones
Download
]]>

Download

2:53 Wanderings
1:13:18 The News
1:43:29 Security
1:47:39 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I pop a kernel, Bo gets refreshed, Josh keeps his chameleon alive, Tony Hughes becomes a hermit, Moss bites into another distro, Joe gets it HANDled, and Tony Watts does the upgrade dance

Then, in our news, Linux Mint gives us an update, Ubuntu and Fedora both get released, XDA has a phone now, and Microsoft Edges into the Linux browser market

In security, Chromium blocks annoyances and fixes a font rendering flaw, and WordPress fixes some bad ones

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Upgraded to Ubuntu 20.10’s 5.8 kernel in Linux Mint. My 5700XT’s performance has increased! Yay!
    • Playing with Kubuntu 20.10 which also has kernel 5.8.
    • Recording this on an AMD A10-7870K with 16GB RAM and all my other audio gear. If something goes wrong today, I’m gonna blame that…
    • Last episode I mentioned that World of Warcraft was crashing in Wine from Lutris. Fixed this by moving from the Wine 5.7 TkG version that Lutris provides to Wine Staging 5.19. That upgraded to 5.20 recently as well.
    • Chromium got upgrades! It’s now part of the Linux Mint repo.
cd ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Baldurs/Gate/3/Launcher/

mv LariLauncher.exe LariLauncher.exe.old

ln -s ../bin/bg3.exe LariLauncher.exe

cp ./*.dll ../bin/
  • Josh
    • My openSUSE samba server is still alive and kicking!
    • After seeing the error of my ways with btrfs I decided to reinstall Mint on my desktop pc.
    • Linux Mint gaming is broken on my newly installed OS #DualMonitorWoes.
    • Testing out Edge on Linux after hearing a ton of good feedback about it.
  • Tony H
    • So the last few weeks have not been brilliant health wise, I missed the last recording as I was ill with acid reflux, which when it flares up really knocks me for 6. At the moment still not a 100% but getting a little better.
    • As we go on air I am currently in a 3 day of shielding with my wife who has to go into hospital for a small operation on Tuesday, luckily this is a day procedure or the lockdown would have been 2 weeks, so I can not leave the house until Tuesday at 6.40am when I take her into the hospital for the operation and even then I can not be there to support her during the process. Blast Covid. On a positive note her covid test came back negative, so the opp can go ahead as planned.
    • One of the downsides of my health issues is it drains me of energy and I’ve not felt like doing much in the way of modeling or preparing my review of KaOS for Distrohoppers that we are hoping to record this coming week, but I will have something to say but not as comprehensive a review as I would like.
  • Moss
    • I had all my teeth removed and they are currently covered by temporary dentures, which is why I’m talking funny right now. This will be going on for some time, but the show must go on!
    • We’re getting ready to record Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 017, presumably the day after this episode hits your podcatcher. This will be another adventure in diction. On another note, Tony has noticed that some of our download numbers have gone backwards, so we should all donate to Archive and ask for our downloads back.
    • I just installed PCLinuxOS on Friday. I was amazed at how easily it went this time, and I’m still reeling from being able to use APT to install RPM packages. The installer has a little catch: it will not tell you what distros are installed on which partitions. This is why I have not yet installed it on my desktop, I didn’t identify my available partitions prior to attempting the install and was not brave enough to take a guess and soldier on.
    • I also installed Feren OS again, and found that they have yet to update the base to 20.04. I looked it up and it is promised for November. I may not spend much time working with Feren until the upgrade.
    • My work has been sporadic, and no paychecks have been received for months. We’re down to our last $30. But Social Security comes tomorrow, and those missing paychecks should come some day. I have a new job on the side, selling a line of products to raise money to house and employ homeless women across the country. I’ve worked with this promoter before, and while it hasn’t always worked out well, it’s not from lack of trying.
    • We finally finished Dead Beat and are working on the next book, Proven Guilty, more slowly now that I can’t talk well.
  • Joe
    • Got a couple of dirt cheap broken handhelds.  I had a lot of fun with it.  So far I have gotten
      • 2 PSP 1001s that did not power on
      • One 3DS XL old that did not power on
      • One DS Lite
    • The NDS Lite needed the lower display replaced
      • This was not a hard fix but when I was putting it back together I noticed that the ribbon cable for the digitizer was a bit  frayed.  I put it back together as best I could any way
      • It seemed to work.  Both screens came on and displayed the need for touchscreen calibration.  It died as soon as I touched the screen and would not power back on.
      • I took it apart again and I saw that the leads were lifted off the ribbon cable
      • I hope that replacing the touchscreen will fix the problem but I know that the board might also be fried like bacon
      • Only one way to find out.
      • It was also acting like the battery was bad …
      • So I replaced the battery and it would still not turn on
      • I attempted to replace the touchpad but it was a little more delicate than I am and now the thing is good for parts but i am fairly sure that i had already messed up the motherboard anyway
    • The 3DS XL was supposedly broken and would not turn on.  But I replaced the battery and hooked it up to power and it turned right on with no issues. I did have to bypass the parental controls which was super easy and I did notice that the joystick felt a little stiff but that cleared up after some time.
      • I was also able to get a multicart off eBay for pretty cheap and it works like the R4 card is supposed to and allowed me to run all the games that were on the cart.
      • It also allowed me to replace the Micro SD card that was in the cart and after I copied over the control files I was able to double the memory of the SD card and add in some of the other roms that I have sitting around.  I was also able to install one of the Genesis emulators and one of the NES emulators to play some of those roms that I own.  As well as adding many of the DS games.  Although I could not play 3DS games from there.
      • I enjoyed the Genesis emulator from there but it would not allow me to switch to full screen or view the whole image at once.  It was not insurmountable but it did take away from the immersion of the game
      • So I went ahead and set up homebrew on the device (everything was done from Linux). This was a long and tedious process but in the end I was able to set up a second 32 gb micro SD card on it with a different Genesis emulator that did allow me to see the whole image and to stretch it to full screen.
      • This also allowed me to set up and remove 3DS games (all legally obtained) and to add custom theming to the device.  I really like how Shovel Knight looked and played on the device and I love playing old school Shadowrun on it.  The Sega version and I have been playing a lot of it
      • So now I can play 3DS games and Sega games from one card and I can play NES, SNES and DS games from the other card.  I suppose I could also set up some Atari emulation if I wanted and get some Centipede or Space Command or Star Raider going.
      • Plus with the DS card that goes into the top I can set up multiple micro SD cards for different setups and just swap them out as needed with as many games as I want.
    • Also ordered 2 PSP 1001’s for a decent price for parts not working
      • One of them had an issue with the battery not wanting to charge but I was able to get the battery working again with a bit of work
      • Also had an issue with the front buttons where the select key was stuck
      • The other one looked good but had a lot of issues and you could tell that it had been apart several times and had pieces removed. Not sure if the screen is good or not but it was not connected.  The power light does come on and batteries do charge when hooked up to it so some decent parts.
      • But other than the screen being completely disconnected the board on the right hand side was completely loose as the retention pins were broken off.  The UMD door was not seated all the way and the latch for it was missing the spring so had to be removed manually
      • But it did have a good set of buttons on the bottom which I was able to move over to the other device to get it working properly.  However this 8 dollar part does not make up for the cost of the device that I paid so I am a little disappointed and may try to troubleshoot it further anyway or simply test parts from it on other devices.
      • But yeah, one of them is working perfectly which makes me happy.  It is running older software so I am going to do the update today.
      • The device is very old so it will not do WPA2 and I am not going to set up an insecure network device so I have to do the updates and mods from the internal memory
        • Not that big of a deal but it is something that should be noted
      • Have done some gaming with the genesis emulator and while it does not feel as refined as the 3DS emulator it still worked well and looked good
      • I also looked up and found the methods that most people were using to transfer movies onto the psp and most of that was using applications that only ran in windows and were outdated.  But looking at those applications I could see that most of them were front ends for ffmpeg.  So I looked for and found a terminal command that worked.
      • ffmpeg -y -i INPUTFILE -flags +bitexact -vcodec libx264 -profile:v baseline -level 3.0 -s 480×272 -r 29.97 -b:v 384k -acodec aac -b:a 96k -ar 48000 -f psp -strict -2 OUTPUTFILE.MP4
      • I am still looking for an up to date way to play PSX games on the PSP.  The old methods were also program based and many of those programs are not available any more.  Because I have many more PS1 games on file than I do PSP because I actually own a couple of different PS1s
    • My main server/garage computer died.  Trouble shooting the issues for that was not what I would call fun.  I was able to narrow the problem down to one of the big 3 which is never good
      • I would go into detail on all the issues and the ways that I tested but it gets tedious
      • Lets just say when one of the big 3 starts going but doesnt brick hard it can lead to some interesting faults that are hard to track down
      • But since I don’t have any other computers that use that chipset or ddr4 RAM I have no other way to test than to purchase parts and swap.  So I have started with RAM.  At least with RAM if it is bad then I have fixed the issue and if it is good and something else is bad I can still use the RAM
      • After that I have to guess but when I am done I will be one or two parts short of having a second complete computer.
      • Financially this has come at a terrible time but I will get it fixed.  If I had known that it was going to break then I would not have started working on old handhelds
      • But it looks like replacing the RAM has worked for now.  Hopefully that is actually the problem and it is solved now
      • I still need to swing by Micro Center and see if they will replace the bad RAM sticks which would bring me up to 32 gig in my server
  • Tony W
    • Redoing the floor in my basement due to my poor choices in life
    • Did the upgrade to next LTS on my server and it was uneventful
    • Chromecast Audio on PA system = WIN
    • Upgrade to Nest Wifi + add’l network switch
    • Chromecast with Google TV, YouTube TV ($65/mo!!!)
    • Magnetic charging cables are awesome
    • LineageOS updating
    • Have been using my Dell 7130 more
    • Sometimes Linux is just better…
      • My old school audio setup works flawlessly in Linux and is NO FUN in Windows

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Londoner for our time zone link
  • Owen Peery for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>

]]> full 4737 mintCast 327 – The Mozilla Thrilla https://mintcast.org/mintcast-327-the-mozilla-thrilla/ Wed, 29 Jan 2020 08:02:54 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4152 Then in our news a new Wine, GParted, Edge and Yaru theme for Ubuntu. The Pinephone ships and Firefox runs into issues.
Finally, in security, we talk password leads and Mozilla addon bans.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, I follow in Tony H’s footsteps and paint, Tony H upgrades a laptop and attends another LUG, Josh returns, Moss meets a mintCast listener, Joe listens to more books and learns about Cockpit, and Tony Watts edits video and works on his Studio.

Then in our news a new Wine, GParted, Edge and Yaru theme for Ubuntu. The Pinephone ships and Firefox runs into issues.

Finally, in security, we talk password leads and Mozilla addon bans.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • DnD Mini painting! D:
  • Tony H
    • Upgraded a Windows 8.1 Sony VAIO i5 laptop to Windows 10 and after the upgrade replaced the spinner with a 120Gig SSD and upgraded the RAM from 4 to 6Gb and this now boots in under 10 seconds. Even I was impressed with the performance improvements, I’m sure part of the issue was that over time the Win8 install had built up a load of windows bloat which slowed it down, but the person who asked me to do this will be very happy to have a workable laptop back. Listening to the first part of the HPR new years eve/day marathon event which was released this week, if you want to know what me and Popey talked about, have a listen.   
    • Went to the LUG and talking to a new member who has just moved to the area and we seem to have trod a similar path with Linux, starting with Ubuntu and migrating to Mint with the advent of the Unity DE. Good to see new people coming to the LUG. 
    • Oh and this week at the LUG I got given some sourdough starter which I have christened ‘Fred’ well it is a living organism lol. So this week sometime I will be trying to bake a sourdough loaf, may have to do a little YouTube research beforehand to make sure I’m doing it right. I’ve made many loaves before but this will be the first time making sourdough. Wish me luck.    
    • And I can’t forget the Matchbox cars, had a lucky flea-Bay find and picked up some very nice models that can go straight into the collection for around a £1 each. I’m sure I can get a lot more than that if I ever want to part with them, but for now they will be staying put. Considering having a stall at the next swap meet, to try and move on some of my many repeats either sell or swap.
  • Moss
    • So I missed the Thinkpad Lovefest last episode. I had a great time at GAFilk (as I always do, which is why I keep going year upon year), but the resultant video did not sound great. I’m waiting for better audio to patch in, foretelling my first go with KDEnlive.
    • At least you didn’t decide to replace me permanently with Alan Pope. My first Thinkpad was purchased only 5 or 6 years ago, a X130e, which later I replaced with a T430 and sent the X130e to my fiancee (now wife). After about a year, she decided she wanted a T430, so we sold the X130e and bought her one. She still has hers; I just sold mine to listener Dale Miracle at a price which was definitely to my benefit, and we got dinner along with it. Thanks, Dale!
    • I’ve been playing Musical Distros on my machines, and somehow managed to have Mint Cinnamon and KDE neon on both computers. I need to find some more distros to play with.  I looked at Nitrux but it doesn’t look like you actually install it. 
    • The problem I was having with Feren OS on my Galago Pro 2, which to date has only shown itself when using only with Kmines and KMahjongg, was not a Feren problem, it was something between the Galago video system and KDE. I had the same issue with KDE neon. And while the blocks of video dropout are white in regular mode, they are dark grey in Dark Mode, which is really something. I haven’t tried Kubuntu to further investigate, but the Galago Pro was reported to have been pretty well-used when listener Jackie Moore sent it to me so it could just be wear.
    • To the people in our Telegram group who seem to think I have the record for the most distros on a machine: one of my MeWe friends has 11. And I have done the math: if I allocated a generous 25 Gb for each distro, I could easily fit 50 distros on my Galago Pro 2; however, thinking about having to update all those distros, not to mention navigating the GRUB menu. I think I’ll stick with 7.
    • I’m trying to talk Tony into doing Peppermint 10 Respin for Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 010 on February 5th.  I tried it and was driven bonkers by the peppermint candy icon in the taskbar. I hate doing negative reviews, especially for good distros, so I’ll get Tony to do a positive one, if he’s up for it. I believe I’ll do Feren OS again, it’s a whole new distro with KDE and what he has done is simply amazing. Our episode download numbers keep increasing, with currently 2 episodes over 500 downloads and 3 more over 400 out of 9 episodes. For as niche-y as we are, those are nice numbers.
    • I replaced Ubuntu Budgie 19.10 with Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix, because that’s what we’re doing this episode. I have no need for two versions of Ubuntu 19.10, but I will miss Budgie. 
    • My wife and I have finished reading Storm Front and got a $1.99 deal on Fool Moon (Dresden Files series), so I’m reading that to my wife now. Apparently these books are not in Kindle Unlimited — which beggars the use of the word “unlimited”, but there you have it. Our flying the skies with Temeraire continues to be on hold.
    • The Rehab facility sent my mom home again just yesterday. Hope she can stay there.
  • Josh
    • Back from Australia
    • Problems with Grandad’s PC (He needs a new one)
    • Editing photos
    • EduBlocks draggable video tutorials
    • Much less of me on the show due to exams in 14 weeks
  • Joe
    • Listened to some good books
    • NOS4A2 by Joe Hill who is the son of Stephen King
      • Really good book
      • You can tell that it was heavily influenced by King
      • Lots of references to Kings works
      • Very detailed but still easy to follow. 
      • Highly recommend and I will be trying a few more books from the same author.  Maybe find out if he has written any series
    • Listened to the Avalon Chronicles which are a continuation of the Hellequin novels
      • Well read but complex enough that for the first read through I needed to drop the speed from 3x to 2x
      • I like the following of new characters while still having the cameos from the previous series to tie it all together.
      • Book 2 and 3 jumped around a lot
    • Started the Lost Fleet series so I could get the beginning of the story.
      • Really having read the second series of this I am having trouble getting through because it is so similar that I feel like I have already read it.
      • Don’t know if I will finish the series any time soon but I will keep it in my library
    • Listening to the Daniel Faust novels again
    • Was hoping to listen to the Demon Squad novels but my copy is gone and I have not found a new one yet
    • Also Yancy Lazarous novels but I was able to find another copy.  So it will be next on my list
    • Started using voice aloud reader which was recommended to me by one of my co-hosts on the linux lug cast.
      • I have never before liked text-aloud books, but using one of the online voice reader options it has worked out very well.
      • So far I have read the 6th book from the Garrett P.I. novels and the first book of the Aubry Knight trilogy
        • Both series are available as ebooks but not audiobooks
        • Both are very good books that I always wanted to get in audio
        • It is not perfect but it is much better than it was 10 years ago
    • Haven’t done much with PI’s in a while and all I have left at this time is some Pi 1’s and a couple of zero w’s
      • For a warm up I plan on setting up a zero w as a pi hole
        • Used raspbian lite
      • I would like to order a Pi 4 and I will get around to it
      • Also looking hard at some physical switches on the GPIO to run scripts
      • But I may just use a usb numpad to start off with.
      • Also looking at 7 inch hdmi touch screens for the pi’s 
    • Thanks Popey for coming on the show last time.  Also thanks for the suggestion on cockpit
      • It helped me easily diagnose the problems on my server.  Yes it all could have been found elsewhere but this tool made it easy with everything consolidated.  I was also able to use the interface to find the issue while I was several miles away at the office.  
      • Turns out one of my 4tb hdds has some bad sectors.  Sadly it is the partition that has all my configurations for docker and all my audiobooks.  
      • Which explains the corrupt audiobook files that I have been seeing. 
      • Ordered an 8tb to replace it.  
    • 8Tb HDD was really easy to set up.  Didn’t have to jump through all the large hard drive hoops that I used to have to.
      • Setup in disks and then use rsync to copy everything over 24 hours to copy 4tb of data.  Power down and power back up to make sure the data is still there and the partition is accessible.
      • Use disks again to change the mount name to what the old drive was(one of them the one for docker) and change the mount point on the old drive
      • Restart the machine and make sure that docker is working then point plex to the new drive location.  
      • Do a full shutdown with no power for a few minutes
        • Yes I’m paranoid
      • It is all working.  I now feel comfortable taking the 4Tb out Although I may wait a few days before doing anything with it.  
    • Installed android x86 on the 7140 which may spend some time as my testing machine
      • I did not want to wipe out my hard drive so I attempted to install it to a USB stick
      • I think my powered usb hub or the cable to it was simply not up to the task
      • So I wiped my drive and ran it there.  
      • It was nice being able to play some of the android games on full screen and install all the apps that I usually use on my phone
      • But the sound did not work on either the speakers or the 3.5mm jack but did work over bluetooth so kinda usable 
      • The only issue I had was recovering when it attempted to sleep since the 7140 does not support that.  The touchpad and wifi would both stop working although I could fix the wifi I could not fix the touchpad without a full restart
    • So I wiped the drive again and attempted to install ubuntu cinnamon.  Invalid partition table every time.
      • Will talk about that in the innards but I did get it fixed
    • Also am attempting to install android x86 in virtualbox on my 7130
      • Need to increase the resources for it but it does seem to be working
    • May have to buy a larger/faster drive for the 7140 
    • Dell Venue 8 Pro woes
      • Spent a couple of days trying to get that set back up
      • Couldn’t install anything with cinnamon
      • Ended up install Mint Mate to replace mint xfce
      • Tried all the old audio fixes and could not get the audio working
      • Surprisingly though the Bluetooth is now working
    • Copyq from the going linux podcast
  • Tony W
    • More progress on digitizing 8mm video
      • Located all of the cables for camcorder
      • VLC did capture both audio and video streams, after selecting video camera as source (vs analog TV as used previously per instruction in a reddit or something)
      • Resulting video files from VLC capture are HUGE.  Uncompressed AVI format
      • Essentially the process is to capture audio/video, then convert the raw uncompressed files to MP4 etc (I will use Handbrake for this)
    • I will be doing some work on my home studio in the basement very soon
      • Drywall and insulation, framing around ducts and pipes, carpet…
      • Need permit from county
      • Planning to host band practice at my house for yet another band project
    • Have been enjoying some of the basic features of Plex I had somehow managed to avoid to this point
      • Bought the android app
      • Casting to chromecasts in the house
      • Added user accts for the kids – gives control over BOTH libraries and ratings restriction

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

  • Our Next Episode will be live Feb 9, 2020. 2PM CST, 8PM UTC

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 1:09:00 4152 mintCast 327 – The Mozilla Thrilla (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-327-the-mozilla-thrilla-mp3/ Wed, 29 Jan 2020 07:40:07 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4150 Then in our news a new Wine, GParted, Edge and Yaru theme for Ubuntu. The Pinephone ships and Firefox runs into issues.
Finally, in security, we talk password leads and Mozilla addon bans.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, I follow in Tony H’s footsteps and paint, Tony H upgrades a laptop and attends another LUG, Josh returns, Moss meets a mintCast listener, Joe listens to more books and learns about Cockpit, and Tony Watts edits video and works on his Studio.

Then in our news a new Wine, GParted, Edge and Yaru theme for Ubuntu. The Pinephone ships and Firefox runs into issues.

Finally, in security, we talk password leads and Mozilla addon bans.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • DnD Mini painting! D:
  • Tony H
    • Upgraded a Windows 8.1 Sony VAIO i5 laptop to Windows 10 and after the upgrade replaced the spinner with a 120Gig SSD and upgraded the RAM from 4 to 6Gb and this now boots in under 10 seconds. Even I was impressed with the performance improvements, I’m sure part of the issue was that over time the Win8 install had built up a load of windows bloat which slowed it down, but the person who asked me to do this will be very happy to have a workable laptop back. Listening to the first part of the HPR new years eve/day marathon event which was released this week, if you want to know what me and Popey talked about, have a listen.   
    • Went to the LUG and talking to a new member who has just moved to the area and we seem to have trod a similar path with Linux, starting with Ubuntu and migrating to Mint with the advent of the Unity DE. Good to see new people coming to the LUG. 
    • Oh and this week at the LUG I got given some sourdough starter which I have christened ‘Fred’ well it is a living organism lol. So this week sometime I will be trying to bake a sourdough loaf, may have to do a little YouTube research beforehand to make sure I’m doing it right. I’ve made many loaves before but this will be the first time making sourdough. Wish me luck.    
    • And I can’t forget the Matchbox cars, had a lucky flea-Bay find and picked up some very nice models that can go straight into the collection for around a £1 each. I’m sure I can get a lot more than that if I ever want to part with them, but for now they will be staying put. Considering having a stall at the next swap meet, to try and move on some of my many repeats either sell or swap.
  • Moss
    • So I missed the Thinkpad Lovefest last episode. I had a great time at GAFilk (as I always do, which is why I keep going year upon year), but the resultant video did not sound great. I’m waiting for better audio to patch in, foretelling my first go with KDEnlive.
    • At least you didn’t decide to replace me permanently with Alan Pope. My first Thinkpad was purchased only 5 or 6 years ago, a X130e, which later I replaced with a T430 and sent the X130e to my fiancee (now wife). After about a year, she decided she wanted a T430, so we sold the X130e and bought her one. She still has hers; I just sold mine to listener Dale Miracle at a price which was definitely to my benefit, and we got dinner along with it. Thanks, Dale!
    • I’ve been playing Musical Distros on my machines, and somehow managed to have Mint Cinnamon and KDE neon on both computers. I need to find some more distros to play with.  I looked at Nitrux but it doesn’t look like you actually install it. 
    • The problem I was having with Feren OS on my Galago Pro 2, which to date has only shown itself when using only with Kmines and KMahjongg, was not a Feren problem, it was something between the Galago video system and KDE. I had the same issue with KDE neon. And while the blocks of video dropout are white in regular mode, they are dark grey in Dark Mode, which is really something. I haven’t tried Kubuntu to further investigate, but the Galago Pro was reported to have been pretty well-used when listener Jackie Moore sent it to me so it could just be wear.
    • To the people in our Telegram group who seem to think I have the record for the most distros on a machine: one of my MeWe friends has 11. And I have done the math: if I allocated a generous 25 Gb for each distro, I could easily fit 50 distros on my Galago Pro 2; however, thinking about having to update all those distros, not to mention navigating the GRUB menu. I think I’ll stick with 7.
    • I’m trying to talk Tony into doing Peppermint 10 Respin for Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 010 on February 5th.  I tried it and was driven bonkers by the peppermint candy icon in the taskbar. I hate doing negative reviews, especially for good distros, so I’ll get Tony to do a positive one, if he’s up for it. I believe I’ll do Feren OS again, it’s a whole new distro with KDE and what he has done is simply amazing. Our episode download numbers keep increasing, with currently 2 episodes over 500 downloads and 3 more over 400 out of 9 episodes. For as niche-y as we are, those are nice numbers.
    • I replaced Ubuntu Budgie 19.10 with Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix, because that’s what we’re doing this episode. I have no need for two versions of Ubuntu 19.10, but I will miss Budgie. 
    • My wife and I have finished reading Storm Front and got a $1.99 deal on Fool Moon (Dresden Files series), so I’m reading that to my wife now. Apparently these books are not in Kindle Unlimited — which beggars the use of the word “unlimited”, but there you have it. Our flying the skies with Temeraire continues to be on hold.
    • The Rehab facility sent my mom home again just yesterday. Hope she can stay there.
  • Josh
    • Back from Australia
    • Problems with Grandad’s PC (He needs a new one)
    • Editing photos
    • EduBlocks draggable video tutorials
    • Much less of me on the show due to exams in 14 weeks
  • Joe
    • Listened to some good books
    • NOS4A2 by Joe Hill who is the son of Stephen King
      • Really good book
      • You can tell that it was heavily influenced by King
      • Lots of references to Kings works
      • Very detailed but still easy to follow. 
      • Highly recommend and I will be trying a few more books from the same author.  Maybe find out if he has written any series
    • Listened to the Avalon Chronicles which are a continuation of the Hellequin novels
      • Well read but complex enough that for the first read through I needed to drop the speed from 3x to 2x
      • I like the following of new characters while still having the cameos from the previous series to tie it all together.
      • Book 2 and 3 jumped around a lot
    • Started the Lost Fleet series so I could get the beginning of the story.
      • Really having read the second series of this I am having trouble getting through because it is so similar that I feel like I have already read it.
      • Don’t know if I will finish the series any time soon but I will keep it in my library
    • Listening to the Daniel Faust novels again
    • Was hoping to listen to the Demon Squad novels but my copy is gone and I have not found a new one yet
    • Also Yancy Lazarous novels but I was able to find another copy.  So it will be next on my list
    • Started using voice aloud reader which was recommended to me by one of my co-hosts on the linux lug cast.
      • I have never before liked text-aloud books, but using one of the online voice reader options it has worked out very well.
      • So far I have read the 6th book from the Garrett P.I. novels and the first book of the Aubry Knight trilogy
        • Both series are available as ebooks but not audiobooks
        • Both are very good books that I always wanted to get in audio
        • It is not perfect but it is much better than it was 10 years ago
    • Haven’t done much with PI’s in a while and all I have left at this time is some Pi 1’s and a couple of zero w’s
      • For a warm up I plan on setting up a zero w as a pi hole
        • Used raspbian lite
      • I would like to order a Pi 4 and I will get around to it
      • Also looking hard at some physical switches on the GPIO to run scripts
      • But I may just use a usb numpad to start off with.
      • Also looking at 7 inch hdmi touch screens for the pi’s 
    • Thanks Popey for coming on the show last time.  Also thanks for the suggestion on cockpit
      • It helped me easily diagnose the problems on my server.  Yes it all could have been found elsewhere but this tool made it easy with everything consolidated.  I was also able to use the interface to find the issue while I was several miles away at the office.  
      • Turns out one of my 4tb hdds has some bad sectors.  Sadly it is the partition that has all my configurations for docker and all my audiobooks.  
      • Which explains the corrupt audiobook files that I have been seeing. 
      • Ordered an 8tb to replace it.  
    • 8Tb HDD was really easy to set up.  Didn’t have to jump through all the large hard drive hoops that I used to have to.
      • Setup in disks and then use rsync to copy everything over 24 hours to copy 4tb of data.  Power down and power back up to make sure the data is still there and the partition is accessible.
      • Use disks again to change the mount name to what the old drive was(one of them the one for docker) and change the mount point on the old drive
      • Restart the machine and make sure that docker is working then point plex to the new drive location.  
      • Do a full shutdown with no power for a few minutes
        • Yes I’m paranoid
      • It is all working.  I now feel comfortable taking the 4Tb out Although I may wait a few days before doing anything with it.  
    • Installed android x86 on the 7140 which may spend some time as my testing machine
      • I did not want to wipe out my hard drive so I attempted to install it to a USB stick
      • I think my powered usb hub or the cable to it was simply not up to the task
      • So I wiped my drive and ran it there.  
      • It was nice being able to play some of the android games on full screen and install all the apps that I usually use on my phone
      • But the sound did not work on either the speakers or the 3.5mm jack but did work over bluetooth so kinda usable 
      • The only issue I had was recovering when it attempted to sleep since the 7140 does not support that.  The touchpad and wifi would both stop working although I could fix the wifi I could not fix the touchpad without a full restart
    • So I wiped the drive again and attempted to install ubuntu cinnamon.  Invalid partition table every time.
      • Will talk about that in the innards but I did get it fixed
    • Also am attempting to install android x86 in virtualbox on my 7130
      • Need to increase the resources for it but it does seem to be working
    • May have to buy a larger/faster drive for the 7140 
    • Dell Venue 8 Pro woes
      • Spent a couple of days trying to get that set back up
      • Couldn’t install anything with cinnamon
      • Ended up install Mint Mate to replace mint xfce
      • Tried all the old audio fixes and could not get the audio working
      • Surprisingly though the Bluetooth is now working
    • Copyq from the going linux podcast
  • Tony W
    • More progress on digitizing 8mm video
      • Located all of the cables for camcorder
      • VLC did capture both audio and video streams, after selecting video camera as source (vs analog TV as used previously per instruction in a reddit or something)
      • Resulting video files from VLC capture are HUGE.  Uncompressed AVI format
      • Essentially the process is to capture audio/video, then convert the raw uncompressed files to MP4 etc (I will use Handbrake for this)
    • I will be doing some work on my home studio in the basement very soon
      • Drywall and insulation, framing around ducts and pipes, carpet…
      • Need permit from county
      • Planning to host band practice at my house for yet another band project
    • Have been enjoying some of the basic features of Plex I had somehow managed to avoid to this point
      • Bought the android app
      • Casting to chromecasts in the house
      • Added user accts for the kids – gives control over BOTH libraries and ratings restriction

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

  • Our Next Episode will be live Feb 9, 2020. 2PM CST, 8PM UTC

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 1:09:00 4150