Edublocks – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Wed, 29 Jan 2020 08:02:54 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Edublocks – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 164426984 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!)
]]> 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!)
]]> 4150 mintCast 320 – Sudos and Sudon’ts https://mintcast.org/mintcast-320-sudos-and-sudonts/ Wed, 23 Oct 2019 06:06:16 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3980 First up, in our Wanderings, I play with audio, Moss tries out two new System76 laptops, Josh has been oggcamping, Joe’s been headphoning, And Tony has been updating a laptop for a friend.
Then, in our news we talk about Ubuntu, Google’s most disappointing pixel yet (the Pixel 4), Linux Mint’s gaming ability, and the releases of Freespire, Tails and Trident.
Finally, in security, we talk sudo.
Download
]]>

Download

This is the new group’s official 1 year anniversary (apart from Josh :D).

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo plays with audio, Moss tries out two new System76 laptops, Josh has been oggcamping, Joe’s been headphoning, And Tony has been updating a laptop for a friend.

Then, in our news we talk about Ubuntu, Google’s most disappointing pixel yet (the Pixel 4), Linux Mint’s gaming ability, and the releases of Freespire, Tails and Trident.

Finally, in security, we talk sudo.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Spilled water on my laptop right before the show…
    • Playing with my audio setup again.
      • Got a new boom stand. A standalone type like you’d see on stage.
      • Haven’t gotten a chance to set it up yet, but an isolation box for the  mic as well.
        • This is mostly because I can’t afford to dish out the cash needed to fully sound deaden a room, so a box with sound deadening is the next best thing!
      • Linux fixes another flash drive.
        • Have had a 32GB flash drive for about 5 years now (AData S102) and thought it died at work recently.
        • During a write operation, a few hundred files, about 200MB, the drive unmounts and then starts to mount and unmount over and over until unplugged. Thought it died.
        • Came home, plugged it into my Mint desktop and used Disks. Removed partitions, reformatted in exFAT, and poof. Fixed.
  • Moss
    • On Tuesday  on the 8th, one of our listeners, Jackie Moore (who has been quite helpful in that past, as you may remember), informed me to expect a package at work. When it arrived, it was a wonderful, though slightly beaten up, System76 Galago Pro 2. It arrived with Pop!_OS on the SSD, and a forgotten installation of Ubuntu on the 1 Terabyte hard drive. I installed Linux Mint 19.2 on the SSD and just installed Ubuntu MATE 19.10 over the old Ubuntu, plus added a couple more distros. This little beast has a 1 Tb hard drive plus a 256 GB SSD, and while it is short on ports, those include a USB-C/Thunderbolt port and two USB 3.1 ports. 
    • As this computer was not the form factor I was looking for, Jackie offered me a deal on a Kudu3, and we came up with a swap; he got my Sans Digital AccuNAS box I had listed on eBay, I got his Kudu3. I hope he is as ecstatic about the trade as I am! I have always dreamed of owning a System76 but thought they would always be beyond my reach — new ones cost more than I have, and used ones are rare — and now I have two of them. I cannot possibly thank Jackie enough, and need to mention he is a fellow Tennessean.
    • I sold 2 tablets on eBay, one of our Kindle Fires and the LG GTab F. This got me about $26 for household. I still have two network switches for sale, one an 8-port and the other a 24-port.
    • I took the extra 4 Gb RAM out of my T430 and placed it in my wife’s T430, and swapped my 9-cell battery with her 6-cell. I can now sell my T430 and get my IdeaPad 110-15acl ready for sale after next episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest.
    • I continue reading Her Majesty’s Dragon to my wife, and also picked up a copy of Animal Farm, which she had never read, and have gotten through a few chapters of that.
    • My mother was in the hospital for a few days and is now back in the rehab facility. She sounds good, but is 90 years old…
  • Josh
    • Visited Oggcamp and joined the podcast panel
      • Lots of things to see
      • Podcast panel with Joe Ressington
      • It was great fun. We covered young people getting into linux, schools, Microsoft adopting linux and generally had a good laugh.
    • Built EduBlocks offline edition. I removed it when I did the overhaul and people want it back. Decided against using Electron as it’s quite heavy on Raspberry Pi.
    • I’m still sorting out my Pixel3 after 4 weeks without a phone now. They offered a refund but tried talking me into store credit even though they said cash. I should have it resolved this week.
    • I’ve 99% decided on the iPhone 11 (non pro) after going to try both that and the Pixel 4 in store tomorrow but I’ll save my thoughts for the news section.
    • All magazines have now shipped, after having a few issues we’ve learnt lots. We still have about 7 damaged copies (which we got replaced with new ones) of which we’re going to donate to local schools. New issue in a few weeks!
  • Joe
    • Ordered 5 HBS 820’s
      • When it arrived it came with 6 which is cool.  
      • 3 of them were working with no issues, which is kind of weird
        • Not that I am complaining
        • The 3 that don’t work, 2 of them have broken neck bands but work otherwise
        • The last one has one side that doesn’t work
        • I also have one from a previous lot that only has one side working
        • Once again just like with the 810s you can only replace same sides with same sides 
        • That means because of the 3 working and the extra parts from the ones with broken bands along with the 2 ones with one side out i will get 5 working total.
        • One of the ones with one side out i also had to glue the connecter to the band back on.  Seems to be holding together well 
        • The interesting part of these is that the soldering is very easy but you have to replace the whole lower plastic section.  You don’t have to desolder the board but you do have to remove everything else around it because of how the earpiece cable goes through the lower assembly
    • Read  book 2 in the last reaper novels and Alex Verus book 10 as well as 6 of the Harley Merlin novels. All shorter books but very enjoyable. I went through the first 6 of the Harley Merlin books in about 2 days. I wouldn’t say that it is great writing but it was engaging enough to keep me listening. No complaints about audio quality
    • Mostly caught up on podcasts but that might be because I don’t know what book to listen to yet.  Maybe some of the Doctor Who audio dramas?
    • Also read Monster Hunter Guardian and Saga of the forgotten warrior book 2 both by larry correia.  Very good author and well done audios.
    • Also Daniel Faust books 1-8
    • Kevin Mitnick   The art of invisibility
      • “You may have nothing to hide but you have everything to protect”
      • Even if you aren’t paranoid about security you should read this book just so you know how privacy doesn’t work.
    • Started up my python classes with a few friends again.
    • I think i have found my next headphone soldering adventures.
      • MMCX connectors.  I have experimented with them before but only with the whole cables.  Now i am going to use the female connectors on cans to go along with the male cables and i am going to try to use the male connectors on the ends of the retractable LGs that usually break near the earpiece.  You can get a couple of sets of the MMCX earpieces for cheap and then rotate through them on the different headsets.
    • Started playing around with MPSYT, aka mps-youtube
      • It is a command line interface to search and play youtube videos
      • I started looking into it to possibly use in conjunction with a pi zero headless
      • I don’t think it would be something I could automate so it doesn’t match my current use case.
      • I have gotten it to load and play playlists, shuffled but i would need to find a way for it to do that automatically.
    • Wrote an article about travel networking.  It is a broad overview at this point
      • covers networking while visiting family
      • Or while at a hotel
      • Or while traveling down the road
  • Tony W
    • Saw Mudhoney live a couple weeks ago, reluctantly didn’t go to Melvins show
      • Good month for grunge concerts in ATL
    • Upgraded a friend’s Toshiba Satellite A505 laptop
      • 5400 HDD to SSD
      • 4G RAM to 8GB
      • Started with fresh Win10 vs OEM preloaded Windows
      • Not a good fit for recommending Linux unfortunately, he is really stuck on itunes 
    • I hate buying printer ink
      • $60 for ink for a printer that’s on its last legs, hard to justify.  At that cost need to contemplate a new printer every time you run out of ink [Moss: I get some really nice printers for under $60, with cheap ink refills.]
    • Played with Bunsenlabs
      • Continuation of the old Crunchbang
      • Really enjoyed crunchbang ‘back in the day’.  It was the only OS I could get to perform well on really old machines
      • System requirements 256 MB of RAM, recommended 1GB
      • Still have 32 bit iso

THE NEWS:

  • Ubuntu 19.10 Released
    • Mint will get the 5.3 kernel “soon.” 5.0 was available about a month after 18.10 was released.
    • Comes with LZ4 compression for faster boot! (coming from Gzip)
    • ZFS on root (experimental)
    • Gnome 3.34
    • Ubuntu Mate, Budgie, Studio, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu also released
    • Ubuntu Cinnamon may be a brand new flavor in 20.04.
  • Ubuntu 20.04 Named
    • Focal Fossa. At least I can pronounce that one (Leo)
    • As the version number implies, it’ll be released in April 2020
  • Happy 15th Birthday, Ubuntu
    • Linux Mint’s 13th birthday was August 27th 2006.
  • Google Pixel 4, Pixelbook Go & Pixel Buds released
    • Josh is highly disappointed
    • The camera sucks (I’ve tried it). If you want a good camera, buy an iPhone
    • The soli radar thing is, weird
    • It’s nice to have a 90Hz display
    • However, they made the battery smaller than the 3!!!! (which was already bad)
  • The Linux Mint 19.2 Gaming Report
    • Gaming Report essentially assesses how easy it is for a new user to get up and running with Steam and Proton and play games on a given distro
    • Assessment was “Promising but room for improvement”
    • Probably biggest knock was lack of inclusion of Vulcan 32-bit libraries, which are required for running proton on machines with AMD graphics
    • Suggested inclusion of Lutris in software center
    • In the Podcast, Jason did say he found Cinnamon “beautiful” and everything was right where he expected it to be
  • Freespire 5.0 Released
    • I remember when this was Lindows. Then Linspire. Now Freespire. (Freespire is the free edition, Linspire is the professional edition.) Freespire got a new start last year: Wikipedia reports, “Freespire 2.0.8, released on 30 November 2007, and based on Ubuntu 7.04, was the final release until the distribution was revived with 3.0 in January 2018.” Some parts of the community are quite critical of the company, as Linspire and Freespire license several proprietary bits of software and codecs intentionally, in order to get more interoperability with Windows features. They do produce a Freespire OSS edition, with only open-source options.
  • Tails 4.0 Released
  • Project Trident dumps BSD, moves to Void Linux
  • Samsung Kills Linux on Dex

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • Bug in sudo allows privilege escalation!
  • Resolution: Upgrade to sudo version 1.8.28.
  • This seems to only be an issue on boxes that have custom sudo privileges (essentially not ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL)
  • Basically, just run updates.

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 and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • 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!>
]]> 3980 mintCast 320 – Sudos and Sudon’ts (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-320-sudos-and-sudonts-mp3/ Wed, 23 Oct 2019 05:57:46 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3978 First up, in our Wanderings, Leo plays with audio, Moss tries out two new System76 laptops, Josh has been oggcamping, Joe’s been headphoning, And Tony has been updating a laptop for a friend.
Then, in our news we talk about Ubuntu, Google’s most disappointing pixel yet (the Pixel 4), Linux Mint’s gaming ability, and the releases of Freespire, Tails and Trident.
Finally, in security, we talk sudo.
Download
]]>

Download

This is the new group’s official 1 year anniversary (apart from Josh :D).

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo plays with audio, Moss tries out two new System76 laptops, Josh has been oggcamping, Joe’s been headphoning, And Tony has been updating a laptop for a friend.

Then, in our news we talk about Ubuntu, Google’s most disappointing pixel yet (the Pixel 4), Linux Mint’s gaming ability, and the releases of Freespire, Tails and Trident.

Finally, in security, we talk sudo.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Spilled water on my laptop right before the show…
    • Playing with my audio setup again.
      • Got a new boom stand. A standalone type like you’d see on stage.
      • Haven’t gotten a chance to set it up yet, but an isolation box for the  mic as well.
        • This is mostly because I can’t afford to dish out the cash needed to fully sound deaden a room, so a box with sound deadening is the next best thing!
      • Linux fixes another flash drive.
        • Have had a 32GB flash drive for about 5 years now (AData S102) and thought it died at work recently.
        • During a write operation, a few hundred files, about 200MB, the drive unmounts and then starts to mount and unmount over and over until unplugged. Thought it died.
        • Came home, plugged it into my Mint desktop and used Disks. Removed partitions, reformatted in exFAT, and poof. Fixed.
  • Moss
    • On Tuesday  on the 8th, one of our listeners, Jackie Moore (who has been quite helpful in that past, as you may remember), informed me to expect a package at work. When it arrived, it was a wonderful, though slightly beaten up, System76 Galago Pro 2. It arrived with Pop!_OS on the SSD, and a forgotten installation of Ubuntu on the 1 Terabyte hard drive. I installed Linux Mint 19.2 on the SSD and just installed Ubuntu MATE 19.10 over the old Ubuntu, plus added a couple more distros. This little beast has a 1 Tb hard drive plus a 256 GB SSD, and while it is short on ports, those include a USB-C/Thunderbolt port and two USB 3.1 ports. 
    • As this computer was not the form factor I was looking for, Jackie offered me a deal on a Kudu3, and we came up with a swap; he got my Sans Digital AccuNAS box I had listed on eBay, I got his Kudu3. I hope he is as ecstatic about the trade as I am! I have always dreamed of owning a System76 but thought they would always be beyond my reach — new ones cost more than I have, and used ones are rare — and now I have two of them. I cannot possibly thank Jackie enough, and need to mention he is a fellow Tennessean.
    • I sold 2 tablets on eBay, one of our Kindle Fires and the LG GTab F. This got me about $26 for household. I still have two network switches for sale, one an 8-port and the other a 24-port.
    • I took the extra 4 Gb RAM out of my T430 and placed it in my wife’s T430, and swapped my 9-cell battery with her 6-cell. I can now sell my T430 and get my IdeaPad 110-15acl ready for sale after next episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest.
    • I continue reading Her Majesty’s Dragon to my wife, and also picked up a copy of Animal Farm, which she had never read, and have gotten through a few chapters of that.
    • My mother was in the hospital for a few days and is now back in the rehab facility. She sounds good, but is 90 years old…
  • Josh
    • Visited Oggcamp and joined the podcast panel
      • Lots of things to see
      • Podcast panel with Joe Ressington
      • It was great fun. We covered young people getting into linux, schools, Microsoft adopting linux and generally had a good laugh.
    • Built EduBlocks offline edition. I removed it when I did the overhaul and people want it back. Decided against using Electron as it’s quite heavy on Raspberry Pi.
    • I’m still sorting out my Pixel3 after 4 weeks without a phone now. They offered a refund but tried talking me into store credit even though they said cash. I should have it resolved this week.
    • I’ve 99% decided on the iPhone 11 (non pro) after going to try both that and the Pixel 4 in store tomorrow but I’ll save my thoughts for the news section.
    • All magazines have now shipped, after having a few issues we’ve learnt lots. We still have about 7 damaged copies (which we got replaced with new ones) of which we’re going to donate to local schools. New issue in a few weeks!
  • Joe
    • Ordered 5 HBS 820’s
      • When it arrived it came with 6 which is cool.  
      • 3 of them were working with no issues, which is kind of weird
        • Not that I am complaining
        • The 3 that don’t work, 2 of them have broken neck bands but work otherwise
        • The last one has one side that doesn’t work
        • I also have one from a previous lot that only has one side working
        • Once again just like with the 810s you can only replace same sides with same sides 
        • That means because of the 3 working and the extra parts from the ones with broken bands along with the 2 ones with one side out i will get 5 working total.
        • One of the ones with one side out i also had to glue the connecter to the band back on.  Seems to be holding together well 
        • The interesting part of these is that the soldering is very easy but you have to replace the whole lower plastic section.  You don’t have to desolder the board but you do have to remove everything else around it because of how the earpiece cable goes through the lower assembly
    • Read  book 2 in the last reaper novels and Alex Verus book 10 as well as 6 of the Harley Merlin novels. All shorter books but very enjoyable. I went through the first 6 of the Harley Merlin books in about 2 days. I wouldn’t say that it is great writing but it was engaging enough to keep me listening. No complaints about audio quality
    • Mostly caught up on podcasts but that might be because I don’t know what book to listen to yet.  Maybe some of the Doctor Who audio dramas?
    • Also read Monster Hunter Guardian and Saga of the forgotten warrior book 2 both by larry correia.  Very good author and well done audios.
    • Also Daniel Faust books 1-8
    • Kevin Mitnick   The art of invisibility
      • “You may have nothing to hide but you have everything to protect”
      • Even if you aren’t paranoid about security you should read this book just so you know how privacy doesn’t work.
    • Started up my python classes with a few friends again.
    • I think i have found my next headphone soldering adventures.
      • MMCX connectors.  I have experimented with them before but only with the whole cables.  Now i am going to use the female connectors on cans to go along with the male cables and i am going to try to use the male connectors on the ends of the retractable LGs that usually break near the earpiece.  You can get a couple of sets of the MMCX earpieces for cheap and then rotate through them on the different headsets.
    • Started playing around with MPSYT, aka mps-youtube
      • It is a command line interface to search and play youtube videos
      • I started looking into it to possibly use in conjunction with a pi zero headless
      • I don’t think it would be something I could automate so it doesn’t match my current use case.
      • I have gotten it to load and play playlists, shuffled but i would need to find a way for it to do that automatically.
    • Wrote an article about travel networking.  It is a broad overview at this point
      • covers networking while visiting family
      • Or while at a hotel
      • Or while traveling down the road
  • Tony W
    • Saw Mudhoney live a couple weeks ago, reluctantly didn’t go to Melvins show
      • Good month for grunge concerts in ATL
    • Upgraded a friend’s Toshiba Satellite A505 laptop
      • 5400 HDD to SSD
      • 4G RAM to 8GB
      • Started with fresh Win10 vs OEM preloaded Windows
      • Not a good fit for recommending Linux unfortunately, he is really stuck on itunes 
    • I hate buying printer ink
      • $60 for ink for a printer that’s on its last legs, hard to justify.  At that cost need to contemplate a new printer every time you run out of ink [Moss: I get some really nice printers for under $60, with cheap ink refills.]
    • Played with Bunsenlabs
      • Continuation of the old Crunchbang
      • Really enjoyed crunchbang ‘back in the day’.  It was the only OS I could get to perform well on really old machines
      • System requirements 256 MB of RAM, recommended 1GB
      • Still have 32 bit iso

THE NEWS:

  • Ubuntu 19.10 Released
    • Mint will get the 5.3 kernel “soon.” 5.0 was available about a month after 18.10 was released.
    • Comes with LZ4 compression for faster boot! (coming from Gzip)
    • ZFS on root (experimental)
    • Gnome 3.34
    • Ubuntu Mate, Budgie, Studio, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu also released
    • Ubuntu Cinnamon may be a brand new flavor in 20.04.
  • Ubuntu 20.04 Named
    • Focal Fossa. At least I can pronounce that one (Leo)
    • As the version number implies, it’ll be released in April 2020
  • Happy 15th Birthday, Ubuntu
    • Linux Mint’s 13th birthday was August 27th 2006.
  • Google Pixel 4, Pixelbook Go & Pixel Buds released
    • Josh is highly disappointed
    • The camera sucks (I’ve tried it). If you want a good camera, buy an iPhone
    • The soli radar thing is, weird
    • It’s nice to have a 90Hz display
    • However, they made the battery smaller than the 3!!!! (which was already bad)
  • The Linux Mint 19.2 Gaming Report
    • Gaming Report essentially assesses how easy it is for a new user to get up and running with Steam and Proton and play games on a given distro
    • Assessment was “Promising but room for improvement”
    • Probably biggest knock was lack of inclusion of Vulcan 32-bit libraries, which are required for running proton on machines with AMD graphics
    • Suggested inclusion of Lutris in software center
    • In the Podcast, Jason did say he found Cinnamon “beautiful” and everything was right where he expected it to be
  • Freespire 5.0 Released
    • I remember when this was Lindows. Then Linspire. Now Freespire. (Freespire is the free edition, Linspire is the professional edition.) Freespire got a new start last year: Wikipedia reports, “Freespire 2.0.8, released on 30 November 2007, and based on Ubuntu 7.04, was the final release until the distribution was revived with 3.0 in January 2018.” Some parts of the community are quite critical of the company, as Linspire and Freespire license several proprietary bits of software and codecs intentionally, in order to get more interoperability with Windows features. They do produce a Freespire OSS edition, with only open-source options.
  • Tails 4.0 Released
  • Project Trident dumps BSD, moves to Void Linux
  • Samsung Kills Linux on Dex

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • Bug in sudo allows privilege escalation!
  • Resolution: Upgrade to sudo version 1.8.28.
  • This seems to only be an issue on boxes that have custom sudo privileges (essentially not ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL)
  • Basically, just run updates.

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 and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • 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!>
]]> 3978