fedora – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Mon, 07 Jul 2025 10:29:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png fedora – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false episodic CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast fedora – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 463 – Tacos And TikTok https://mintcast.org/463-tacos-and-tiktok/ Mon, 07 Jul 2025 10:29:03 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7552 First up in the news: Linux hits 5%, Nintendo does what we feared, The orange baby eats a TACO, Steam prefers Proton to Native, Fedora might have killed Bazzite and a new Firefox release

We also welcome Charles as a new co-host!

In security and privacy: more password leakage by big tech

And finally, the Feedback and a couple of suggestions

]]> First up in the news: Linux hits 5%, Nintendo does what we feared, The orange baby eats a TACO, Steam prefers Proton to Native, Fedora might have killed Bazzite and a new Firefox release

We also welcome Charles as a new co-host!

In security and privacy: more password leakage by big tech

And finally, the Feedback and a couple of suggestions

Full Show Notes Here

The News:


Trump extends deadline for US TikTok sale to September


Steam Client Now Enables Proton by Default for Games without Native Linux Builds


Firefox 141 Promises to Use Less Memory on Linux Systems, Beta Out Now


Linux Reaches 5% Desktop Market Share In USA


F44 Change Proposal: Drop i686 support (system wide)


The whole truth about Fedora’s 32-bit proposal w/ Kyle from Bazzite


Nintendo is nuking Switch 2 accounts for using Mig Flash

Security And Privacy


16 billion passwords leaked in Google, Facebook, Apple massive data breach

Check This Out:


WHW03 Mesh Router openwrt


GL.iNet GL-SFT1200

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing and for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>

]]> 463 463 Tacos And TikTok full 1:24:29 7552 455 – Proxmox https://mintcast.org/455-proxmox/ Wed, 19 Feb 2025 01:59:36 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7402 First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – January, Ubuntu 24.04.2 Delayed, Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Steps Down As Upstream Apple Silicon Maintainer, Serpent OS Rebrands as AerynOS, OBS Studio Threatens Fedora With Legal Action

Then in our Wanderings: Bill has been busy with work, Joe has been spending some quality time with Proxmox and Portainer, Moss tries to get up to speed with a long overdue update, and Eric has been have a great time with smartwatches and LLMs.

In our Innards section: Joe discusses his Proxmox setup

In our newest feature, Bodhi Corner: Moss discusses what the Bodhi team is working on for current and future versions of Bodhi Linux;

And finally in Check This Out, Eric covers a nice GUI tool named Pods, used to manage Podman containers.

]]> First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – January, Ubuntu 24.04.2 Delayed, Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Steps Down As Upstream Apple Silicon Maintainer, Serpent OS Rebrands as AerynOS, OBS Studio Threatens Fedora With Legal Action

Then in our Wanderings: Bill has been busy with work, Joe has been spending some quality time with Proxmox and Portainer, Moss tries to get up to speed with a long overdue update, and Eric has been have a great time with smartwatches and LLMs.

In our Innards section: Joe discusses his Proxmox setup

In our newest feature, Bodhi Corner: Moss discusses what the Bodhi team is working on for current and future versions of Bodhi Linux;

And finally in Check This Out, Eric covers a nice GUI tool named Pods, used to manage Podman containers.

Full Show Notes Here

The News:


Mint Monthly News – January 2025


Ubuntu 24.04.2 Delayed


Asahi Linux Lead Developer Hector Martin Steps Down As Upstream Apple Silicon Maintainer


No More Snakes: Serpent OS Rebrands as AerynOS


OBS Studio Threatens Fedora With Legal Action

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing and for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 455 455 Proxmox full 1:37:56 7402 442 – AMD Support is Cachy(ing) On https://mintcast.org/442-amd-support-is-cachying-on/ Sat, 27 Jul 2024 22:09:09 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7066 First up in the news: Mint 22 update, Red Hat may replace GRUB, Fedora drops X11, CachyOS adds AMD support, Apple approves PC emulator, SUSE Requests openSUSE to Rebrand, EXT4 Has A Very Nice Performance Optimization For Linux 6.11

In security and privacy: CrowdStrike broke Linux and nobody noticed, Firefox's New Controversial Feature

Then in our Wanderings: Bill puts his foot down, Joe is working on magnetism, Moss has new toys,

In our Innards section: We talk about Pine64 products

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

]]>
First up in the news: Mint 22 update, Red Hat may replace GRUB, Fedora drops X11, CachyOS adds AMD support, Apple approves PC emulator, SUSE Requests openSUSE to Rebrand, EXT4 Has A Very Nice Performance Optimization For Linux 6.11


In security and privacy: CrowdStrike broke Linux and nobody noticed, Firefox’s New Controversial Feature


Then in our Wanderings: Bill puts his foot down, Joe is working on magnetism, Moss has new toys,


In our Innards section: We talk about Pine64 products


And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Full Show Notes Here

The News:


Mint 22 Update


Red Hat may replace GRUB


X11 Is No Longer Part of Fedora Workstation 41


CachyOS Introduces New Repository Optimized for AMD Zen 4 and Zen 5 CPUs


Apple Approves First PC Emulator App for iOS – Can it Run Linux?


SUSE Requests openSUSE to Rebrand


EXT4 Has A Very Nice Performance Optimization For Linux 6.11

Security and Privacy


CrowdStrike broke Debian and Rocky Linux months ago, but no one noticed


Firefox’s New Controversial Feature: Is it a problem?

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 442 442 AMD Support is Cachy(ing) On full 1:51:18 7066 428 – 32 bit’s Days Are Numbered https://mintcast.org/428-32-bits-days-are-numbered/ Sat, 13 Jan 2024 00:46:59 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6556 First up in the news: Mint Monthly News, Fedora Asahi Remix Officially Released for Apple Silicon Macs

In security and privacy: Nothin'. We got nothin'.

Then in our Wanderings: Bill becomes “unstable”; Majid bricks and un-bricks; Moss is counting pixels; Joe …; and Eric does some Homebrewing

Download
]]> First up in the news: Mint Monthly News, Fedora Asahi Remix Officially Released for Apple Silicon Macs

In security and privacy: Nothin’. We got nothin’.

Then in our Wanderings: Bill becomes “unstable”; Majid bricks and un-bricks; Moss is counting pixels; Joe …; and Eric does some Homebrewing

  1. 00:00:00 – Intro
  2. 00:01:28 – News
  3. 00:36:06 – Bi-Weekly Wanderings
  4. 01:22:27 – Housekeeping and Announcemnts
  5. 01:23:16 – Wrap Up
  6. 01:25:44 – Outro
Full Show Notes Here

The News

Mint Monthly News

Fedora Asahi Remix Officially Released for Apple Silicon Macs

GNOME Makes New System Monitor Extension for GNOME Shell

Fwupd 1.9.11 Released With Support For New Algoltek & Luxshare USB Devices

Debian preps ground to drop 32-bit x86 as separate edition

Microsoft wants to add a Copilot key to your PC keyboard

Contact Info

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 428 428 32 bit's Days Are Numbered full 1:27:00 6556 425 – Firefox Down https://mintcast.org/425-firefox-down/ Sun, 19 Nov 2023 03:17:20 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6460 First up in the news: Ubuntu 24.04 gets a name, Mozilla Doubles Down on Firefox DEB Package, Discord is now official on Flathub, scrcpy gets an update, LXQt 1.4.0 is released, Firefox Accounts gets a Mozilla rename, Brave launches an AI, there is a new Audacity, OpenELA forms to preserve RHEL access, Element gets a new license, Proton has a new app, Fedora 39 is released, and OBS Studio 30 is out

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

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

In security and privacy: we got nothing

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

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

The News

Ubuntu 24.04 gets a name

Mozilla Doubles Down on Firefox DEB Package

Discord is now Verified on Flathub

scrcpy v2.2

LXQt 1.4.0 Released

Why ‘Firefox accounts’ are becoming ‘Mozilla accounts’

Brave launches Leo AI

Audacity 3.4 Released with New Music Workflows, Time Stretch Tool

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

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

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

Fedora Linux 39 is officially here!

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

Full Show Notes Can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contribution
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 425 425 Firefox Down full 1:42:37 6460 421 – Fun and Feckless https://mintcast.org/421-fun-and-feckless/ Wed, 20 Sep 2023 04:00:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6377 First up in the news: LMDE 6 “Faye” BETA Released, Fedora and Asahi Linux revamp installation process, Plasma 6 release date is set, IBM raises cloud prices, Manjaro 23 released, Mozilla rushes out patches, and ZFS returns to Ubuntu

In security and privacy, a huge security breach affects all browsers, and Google does user tracking

Then in our Wanderings, Majid has been a busy bunny, Joe is having troubles with 3D, Dale has been driven crazy, Bill gears up for public education, and Eric hates computers.

Download
]]> First up in the news: LMDE 6 “Faye” BETA Released, Fedora and Asahi Linux revamp installation process, Plasma 6 release date is set, IBM raises cloud prices, Manjaro 23 released, Mozilla rushes out patches, and ZFS returns to Ubuntu

In security and privacy, a huge security breach affects all browsers, and Google does user tracking

Then in our Wanderings, Majid has been a busy bunny, Joe is having troubles with 3D, Dale has been driven crazy, Bill gears up for public education, and Eric hates computers.

The News

LMDE 6 “Faye” – BETA Released

Fedora and Asahi Linux revamp installation process

Plasma 6 will be released in February 2024

Price shock: IBM to increase cloud costs by up to 26% in 2024

Manjaro 23.0 Uranos released

Mozilla patches Firefox, Thunderbird against zero-day exploited in attacks

Ubuntu 23.10 Restores ZFS File-System Support In Its Installer

Full Show Notes Can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contribution
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 421 421 Fun and Feckless full true 2:01:58 6377 417.5 – Pick Me! Pick Me! https://mintcast.org/417-5-pick-me-pick-me/ Wed, 02 Aug 2023 05:00:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6287 In our Innards section, we talk “ethical telemetry”

And finally, the feedback

In "Check This Out" Check out the new version and tell us what you think!

Download
]]> In our Innards section, we talk “ethical telemetry”

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

In “Check This Out”

Check out the new version and tell us what you think!

https://linuxmint.com/download.php

Full Show Notes Can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contribution
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 417 417 Pick Me! Pick Me! full true 1:05:12 6287 413 – Flying Wigs https://mintcast.org/413-flying-wigs/ Wed, 31 May 2023 05:00:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6198 First up in the news, Arch migrates Git, Ubuntu changes PPAs, Fedora Onyx is approved, Google to remove old accounts, Debian re-imposes a moratorium, Proton goes Family, Red Hat unveils a new Desktop, Fedora plans to drop X11, Thunderbird gets a new logo

In security and privacy, Google’s 2FA isn’t private enough

Then in our Wanderings, Majid is off to University, Joe is manacled to his office, Moss kicks the tires on the new Bodhi, and Bill migrates

Download
]]> First up in the news, Arch migrates Git, Ubuntu changes PPAs, Fedora Onyx is approved, Google to remove old accounts, Debian re-imposes a moratorium, Proton goes Family, Red Hat unveils a new Desktop, Fedora plans to drop X11, Thunderbird gets a new logo;


In security and privacy, Google’s 2FA isn’t private enough;

Then in our Wanderings, I’m off to University, Joe is manacled to his office, Moss kicks the tires on the new Bodhi, and Bill migrates

The News

Arch Migrates Git

Ubuntu Makes “Significant Changes” to PPAs for 23.10

Fedora Onyx, Immutable and with Budgie, approved for Fedora 39

Google To Start Removing Inactive Accounts After 2 Years

Google Chrome’s 2023 UI Refresh on Ubuntu

Debian Votes to Reinstate Merged-usr File Movement Moratorium

Proton Unveils Family Plan

Red Hat Reveals Podman Desktop 1.0

Fedora Intends To Completely Drop X11 in Plasma 6

Thunderbird Gets a Brand New Logo

Security And Privacy

Google’s New 2FA Isn’t End-to-End Encrypted

Full Show Notes Can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

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

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contribution
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 413 413 Flying Wigs full 1:39:56 6198 399 – Lunar Eclipse? No, Lunar Lobster https://mintcast.org/399-lunar-eclipse-no-lunar-lobster/ Wed, 02 Nov 2022 04:45:39 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5712 up in the news: The Kudu is out, with a Lobster on its tail, Fedora 37 is dragging, the next Kernel takes less power from the people, Steam Snap switches stacks, Flatpak gets Meson, and Linus wants to forget about 486; 
In security and privacy: we get the first security update for the Kudu;
Then in our Wanderings: Joe goes to Micro Center, Moss is having a ball, and Bill is clouding around
In our Innards section, we continue our historical journey through Linux distros;
And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Download
]]> News 1:29
Security and Privacy 18:35
Biweekly Wanderings 20:8
Linux Innards 47:40
Vibrations By The Ether 1hr 25m
Housekeeping and Announcements 1h 32m

First up in the news: The Kudu is out, with a Lobster on its tail, Fedora 37 is dragging, the next Kernel takes less power from the people, Steam Snap switches stacks, Flatpak gets Meson, and Linus wants to forget about 486;

In security and privacy: we get the first security update for the Kudu;

Then in our Wanderings: Joe goes to Micro Center, Moss is having a ball, and Bill is clouding around

In our Innards section, we continue our historical journey through Linux distros;

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

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Check This Out

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert, Londoner, Tony H, AudioFreak(Riyo) and all others for our audio editing
  • Josh Lowe, and Bill Houser for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Linode for hosting mintcast.org
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 399 399 Lunar Eclipse? No, Lunar Lobster full 1:37:07 5712 394 – With music on our side to break the old hard drives https://mintcast.org/394-with-music-on-our-side-to-break-the-old-hard-drives/ Fri, 26 Aug 2022 15:20:07 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5598 In security and privacy, Discord and your passwords are pythoned, and hard drives apparently have a taste in music
Then in our Wanderings, Joe plays with his handheld, Bill is setting up a new server, Moss skips the assault and gets a couple batteries, and Norbert has had done some things.
Download
]]> 1:25 The News
16:15 Security and Privacy
26:03 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:22:59 Housekeeping and Announcements

First up in the news, The Kernel gets a bump, LibreOffice adds a point, Android 13 is out if you have a Pixel, and Gnome has a birthday,

In security and privacy, Discord and your passwords are pythoned, and hard drives apparently have a taste in music

Then in our Wanderings, Joe plays with his handheld, Bill is setting up a new server, Moss skips the assault and gets a couple batteries, and Norbert has had done some things.

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

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert, Londoner, Tony H, and all others for our audio editing
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 394 - With music on our side to break the old hard drives full 1:26:24 5598 387.5 – If you were to build a distro… https://mintcast.org/387-5-if-you-were-to-build-a-distro/ Wed, 15 Jun 2022 22:02:23 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5506 Download
]]> 00:33 Linux Innards
33:47 Vibrations From the Ether
42:33 Announcements

In our Innards section we discuss how we would build our own distro

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions.

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

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 387.5 - If you were to build a distro... full 49:09 5506 387 – The Curious Case of Debian Downloads https://mintcast.org/387-the-curious-case-of-debian-downloads/ Wed, 15 Jun 2022 12:13:29 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5496 ]]> 2:32 The News
13:25 Security and Privacy
22:10 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:05:28 Announcements

First up in the news: NVIDIA is transitioning, Debian talks non-free, Ubuntu has new ISOs and Docker news.

In security and privacy: Intel has more microcode

Then in our Wanderings: Joe lost the election, Norbert watches sci-fi and Bill sets up NextCloud.

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

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> full 1:16:26 5496 385 – I like my desktop the way I like my drink https://mintcast.org/385-i-like-my-desktop-the-way-i-like-my-drink/ Sat, 11 Jun 2022 02:45:11 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5457 Download
]]> 1:30 The News
20:10 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
47:57 Announcements

First up in the news, Mint 21 will have a new graphical upgrade tool; Fedora plans to remove BIOS and XOrg; Gnome43 reworks adwaita tools; a Sony engineer makes exFAT 73% faster; and Alibaba previews a 128-core Armv9 server processor.

Then in our Wanderings, Joe is Board of school runnings, Norbert is looking for a MATE, Moss blew up Kodi; and Bill is browsercasting.

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

The News

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 385 - I like my desktop the way I like my drink full 52:13 5457 383 – Ubuntu is out-fedoring Fedora https://mintcast.org/383-ubuntu-is-out-fedoring-fedora/ Tue, 07 Jun 2022 15:55:26 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5442 Download
]]> 2:05 The News
20:32 Security and Privacy Update
67:15 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
37:40

First up in the news: Ubuntu is out-fedoring Fedora; Linux 5.18 brings new optimizations; the Budgie has landed; Debian 12 has a projected birthday, and Asahi has its first Alpha;

In security and privacy, a new Spectre has arisen;

Then in our Wanderings, Bill gets “Jitsi with it”, Moss goes down the “pi-hole”, and Norbert hops onto the Fedora bandwagon

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

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:

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> full 42:29 5442 381 – Mozilla Does Something Meta https://mintcast.org/381-mozilla-does-something-meta/ Wed, 11 May 2022 00:16:50 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5377 Download
]]> 1:44 The News
12:40 Security and Privacy Update
32:30 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:11:35 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news: AMD builds brand new Linux graphics driver support and Ubuntu MATE to add native Flatpak support.

In security and privacy: Arch Linux packages are… outdated? Mozilla does something really Meta, the ‘EARN IT Act’ makes a return, and FLoC was a flop, but Google has some new ideas.

Then in our Wanderings Joe gets another new to me bike, Norbert defeats distro-hopping, Moss goes international, Josh tells us about running Manjaro, and Bill is truckcasting.

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

      • Joe got my care package from Moss to work on, which t included 2 sets of headphones and 2 handheld tape recorders. He took some vacation days this last week in order to try and get some campaign stuff done for the school board.
      • Norbert hasn’t distrohopped for a couple of months and thinks he found his perfect distros in Fedora, Arch and Void.
      • Moss was preparing for Episode 030 of Distrohoppers’ Digest and has been making episodes of Full Circle Weekly News. He participated in Eurofilk, a singing and sharing Zoom meeting which happens every couple weeks.
      • Josh T replaced my trusty Debian 11 install and have opted to live in the Manjaro world for a while.
    • Bill has been getting his new podcast up and running.

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 381 - Mozilla Does Something Meta full 1:15:57 5377 380.5 – Master and Apprentice (LPIC-1) https://mintcast.org/381-master-and-apprentice/ Sat, 30 Apr 2022 19:16:30 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5368 Download
]]> 1:16 Linux Innards
30:18 Vibrations From the Ether
35:26 Check This Out
37:43 Announcements

In our Innards section, we strive to become certified Linux administrators and discuss the LPIC-1 exam.

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

The Linux Innards

  • Budget? Do you like classes? Bootcamps?
    • No budget
    • A tiny budget (~$20)
      • Do everything above and
      • Find a used copy of the Sybex Practice Tests. It’s 1000 questions. Cheapest, by far.
    • A moderate budget (~$100)
      • Sign up for something like CBTNuggets or ITPro.tv for two months and make a commitment to actually use those two months wisely. Professional content and interaction with fellow forum members.
  • These tests are not particularly difficult, but they cover such a wide array of topics you can easily lose track and it’s easy to forget little details.
  • If all you’re interested in is passing, you can probably get by pretty easily in a couple months of 8-10 hours studied per week. Probably less. This approach is really just memorization, though.
  • If you actually want to understand the material, you should spin up some virtual servers and actually use the commands. You can do it all on VMs with lots of small vDisks, multiple NICs, connect them to each other, and the software’s all free.
  • The test is fairly straightforward. Multiple choice and fill in the blank style questions. That’s it. You either know it or you don’t.

Check This Out

10 minutes

  • Extension Manager – a better alternative to the Gnome Extensions app
  • adw-gtk – A GTK3 theme that looks like GTK4/libadwaita

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 380.5 - Master and Apprentice full 42:27 5368 380 – Leo makes an appearance https://mintcast.org/380-leo-makes-an-appearance/ Sun, 24 Apr 2022 14:32:21 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5363 In security, PolicyKit vulnerability lies dormant for a decade, GNU coreutils are being rewritten in Rust, Ubuntu improves low memory handling andSurfshark VPN jumps the shark.
Then in our Wanderings, Moss strikes a chord, Norbert further bodges his system, Bill gets more air time, Leo goes on an XL MX adventure, Joe runs for board and Nishant is distro hopping.
Download
]]> 1:45 The News
33:09 Security Update
57:43 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:30:48 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news, Raspberry Pi OS has a 64-bit version, Nvidia has a release, System76 releases their scheduler, the This Week in Gnome blog, Slackware and Peppermint OS have new releases and Debian uses Arch.

In security, PolicyKit vulnerability lies dormant for a decade, GNU coreutils are being rewritten in Rust, Ubuntu improves low memory handling andSurfshark VPN jumps the shark.

Then in our Wanderings, Moss strikes a chord, Norbert further bodges his system, Bill gets more air time, Leo goes on an XL MX adventure, Joe runs for board and Nishant is distro hopping.

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

The News

20 minutes

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

  • Moss joined the February Album Writing Month
  • Norbert found a way to save space when dual-booting
  • Bill starts a new podcast titled 3 Fat Truckers
  • Leo tries MX Linux and gives Gnome a real fair shake
  • Joe started testing usbip on his Pi 4
  • Nishant has been preparing for LPIC-1

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 380 - Leo makes an appearance full 1:35:08 5363 378.5 – Oh, the Distros You’ll Go! https://mintcast.org/378-5-oh-the-distros-youll-go/ Sun, 06 Mar 2022 15:45:12 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5343 In security, Ubuntu Kernel Security Patches, FGKASLR gets closer to mainline, Data stealing malware hides on Linux servers, Go Daddy data breach
In our Wanderings, Joe does some 3d printing, Josh got a new monitor, Norbert switches OS’s, and Clayton looks back
Download
]]> 1:00 The Linux Innards
38:06 Vibrations from the Ether
43:20 Check This Out
45:00 Announcements & Outro

In this episode we discuss our current daily driver distros of choice and pick alternatives that we would move to if our current distros of choice stopped being developed.

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

The Innards

  • We discuss our current daily driver distros of choice and pick alternatives that we would move to if our current distros of choice stopped being developed.

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 378.5 - Oh, the Distros You'll Go! full 49:24 5343 377.5 – Predicting Predicaments https://mintcast.org/377-5-predicting-predicaments/ Sat, 29 Jan 2022 16:46:15 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5324 Download
]]> 1:30 Linux Innards
56:32 Check This Out
57:28 Announcements & Outro

In our Linux Innards, we review our 2021 predictions and make our new predictions for 2022.

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit. YouTube.

The Linux Innards

Our predictions for the new year

  • Joe
    • Steam Deck will be a success and will contribute to the number of Linux machines in the wild
    • The Chip shortage will continue and prices on computers will remain high
    • Graphics card prices will somewhat return to normal as a new hardware competitor will come out that will be better for crypto than graphics cards
  • Norbert
    • When using the proprietary Nvidia drivers on Ubuntu, Wayland will be at least enabled on Ubuntu 22.04 and will be the default session in 22.10
    • EndeavourOS will be in first place on DistroWatch on the default 6-month ranking list at some point during the year
    • GTK theming will still be viable with GTK4, but with libraries as opposed to CSS
    • Increased focus on Wayland will lead to development of the X12 protocol
  • Josh Hawk
    • Steam Deck will succeed (not everyone will cancel orders)
    • SteamOS will only be really good on steam deck
    • Pop OS will have at least a beta of their new DE by end of 2022.
    • Community arguments about Gnome will worsen and lead to many leaving Gnome as users.
    • Alma Linux will become more popular than RHEL/CentOS Stream.
  • Nishant
    • Gaming on Linux will pick up.
    • Fedora will lead the forefront in adoption of latest kernel/DE
    • I will make my foray into Linux System Administration.
    • Linux phones will double in number and power in 2022.
    • I am throwing my elbows out here, Linux will overtake Mac OS in market share by end of 2022
  • Bill
    • The Steam Deck will not ship in February
    • Asahi Linux will gain hardware acceleration on the Mac

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 377.5 - Predicting Predicaments full 1:02:03 5324 377 – Zero Days of Christmas https://mintcast.org/377-zero-days-of-christmas/ Thu, 06 Jan 2022 05:08:48 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5316 In security, a grub update causes problems with Ubuntu and a Log4shell update
Then in our wanderings, Joe's on vacation, Norbert's full of gingerbread, Nishant is surviving the winter, Josh is on Windows, and Bill's just glad to be here
Download
]]> 1:56 The News
21:20 Security Update
32:54 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:20:55 Announcements & Outro

In the news, Pop OS 21.10 is released, GNOME 42 – Top New Feature and Release Detail, ReactOS 0.4.14 has been released, Krita 5.0 has been released, and there’s yet another desktop environment on the horizon

In security, a grub update causes problems with Ubuntu and a Log4shell update

Then in our wanderings, Joe’s on vacation, Norbert’s full of gingerbread, Nishant is surviving the winter, Josh is on Windows, and Bill’s just glad to be here

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

  • Joe
    • Vacationing, Troubleshooting, Testing Docker, and VPNing
  • Norbert
    • XFCE WM Hybrid, zentile, OpenSUSE
  • Nishant
  • Josh
  • Bill

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 1:25:24 5316 376 – Joe, Do You Copy? https://mintcast.org/376-joe-do-you-copy/ Sun, 19 Dec 2021 18:40:05 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5299 In security, Ubuntu Kernel Security Patches, FGKASLR gets closer to mainline, Data stealing malware hides on Linux servers, Go Daddy data breach
In our Wanderings, Joe does some 3d printing, Josh got a new monitor, Norbert switches OS’s, and Clayton looks back
Download
]]> 1:46 The News
16:16 Security Update
23:52 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
52:38 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news, Linux Mint monthly news, Europe embraces open source, Debian has browser issues, Fedora goes all in on Wayland, Firefox helps you fight spam, And the Linux kernel gets rusty

In security, Ubuntu Kernel Security Patches, FGKASLR gets closer to mainline, Data stealing malware hides on Linux servers, Go Daddy data breach

In our Wanderings, Joe does some 3d printing, Josh got a new monitor, Norbert switches OS’s, and Clayton looks back

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

  • Joe
    • 3d printing, crypto, food
  • Josh
    • Health, monitors, outdoors
  • Norbert
    • Debian testing, Gnome, Japanese
  • Clayton
    • The old days, SSD’s, printing

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 376 - Joe, Do You Copy? full 58:02 5299 374 – Mounted Archery https://mintcast.org/374-mounted-archery/ Wed, 17 Nov 2021 07:16:41 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5274 In security, A Dutch newspaper gets hacked, Azure is vulnerable, and AMD and Intel have more security flaws
Then in our Wanderings, Joe works on an xbox, Josh remodels a bathroom, Tony got a new phone and Norbert tells us about running arch
Download
]]> 1:49 The News
10:37 Security Update
20:35 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
41:38 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news, Linux Mint Monthly News, Firefox 94 released, Steam OS announcement, System76 Desktop announcement, Intel has been doing this for a long time and Nvidia released a fix

In security, A Dutch newspaper gets hacked, Azure is vulnerable, and AMD and Intel have more security flaws

Then in our Wanderings, Joe works on an xbox, Josh remodels a bathroom, Tony got a new phone and Norbert tells us about running arch

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 374 - Mounted Archery full 45:14 5274 372.5 – The Tablet Chronicles https://mintcast.org/372-5-the-tablet-chronicles/ Wed, 27 Oct 2021 05:24:39 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5250 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:22 Linux Innards
36:00 Vibrations from the Ether
52:41 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, tablets

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Sarmen
  • David D
  • Dylan B

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Leo for our audio production
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logg
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 372.5 - The Tablet Chronicles full 59:14 5250 372 – Ryzen Sun https://mintcast.org/372-ryzen-sun/ Wed, 20 Oct 2021 04:49:53 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5244 In security Retpolines patches for performance and Azure Linux boot failures
Then in our Wandering, Joe has some Pi, Norbert edits video, Tony Updates a BIOS, and Nishant upgrades Fedora
Download
]]> 1:44 The News
18:21 Security Update
21:43 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
56:20 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news Pinephone Pro, KDE’s 5.23 on their 25th, Ubuntu Frame, Windows 11 Ryzen slowdowns, and Nvidia updates

In security Retpolines patches for performance and Azure Linux boot failures

Then in our Wandering, Joe has some Pi, Norbert edits video, Tony Updates a BIOS, and Nishant upgrades Fedora

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Bo for our audio production
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logg
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 372 - Ryzen Sun full 1:03:16 5244 370.5 – What Got You Into Linux? https://mintcast.org/370-5-what-got-you-into-linux/ Wed, 29 Sep 2021 05:09:39 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5221 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:49 Linux Innards
40:47 Vibrations from the Ether
56:22 Check This Out
1:04:09 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, an introduction to the new folks that will carry the show with Tony and Joe

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

  • What got you into linux?
  • What drove you to say “yes” to being on mintCast?
  • What do you love most about linux?
  • Where do you want mintCast to go in the next 12 months ?
  • What’s your current favorite distro?
  • What’s your current favorite desktop environment?

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Michel C
  • Brad A
  • William T
  • Henrik H

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio production
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logg
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 370.5 - What Got You Into Linux? full 1:11:49 5221 mintCast 363 – Audacity Rewind https://mintcast.org/mintcast-363-audacity-rewind/ Wed, 16 Jun 2021 17:43:40 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5100 Then, our news we have a Linux Mint update, Audacity backtracks, a top 10 and OBS’s wayland support
In security, polkit
Download
]]> 2:33 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
43:26 The News
1:26:28 Security Update
1:29:58 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I miss a delivery, Joe forgets to backup, Bo tinkers with pipewire, and Tony turns the amperage up to 10.

Then, our news we have a Linux Mint update, Audacity backtracks, a top 10 and OBS’s wayland support

In security, polkit

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

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 …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 5100 mintCast 362 – The Takeover https://mintcast.org/mintcast-362-the-takeover/ Wed, 02 Jun 2021 06:54:23 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5082 Then in our news, Freenode taken over by Andrew Lee and Ubuntu and Fedora abandon ship, Material Shell for Gnome 40, Fedora 32 is end of life, and more
Download
]]> Download

3:02 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:06:36 The News
1:34:45 Security Update
1:44:36 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been system building, Joe has been playing with his new 3D printer, Bo has range anxiety and Tony has been learning about creating YouTube videos

Then in our news, Freenode taken over by Andrew Lee and Ubuntu and Fedora abandon ship, Material Shell for Gnome 40, Fedora 32 is end of life, and more

In security, a Linux rootkit that shows its face…fish.

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

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 …

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 5082 mintCast 353 – Brave New WWW (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-353-brave-new-www-mp3/ Wed, 27 Jan 2021 05:46:48 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4892 Then, our news we talk RPi Pico, Ubuntu’s Booting on an Apple M1, Flatpak is faster, Project Linux turns into Alma Linux, and more
In security, the InterPlanetary File System
Download
]]> Download

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

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

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

In security, the InterPlanetary File System

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

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

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

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

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 4892 mintCast 353 – Brave New WWW https://mintcast.org/mintcast-353-brave-new-www/ Wed, 27 Jan 2021 05:36:39 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4885 Then, our news we talk RPi Pico, Ubuntu’s Booting on an Apple M1, Flatpak is faster, Project Linux turns into Alma Linux, and more
In security, the InterPlanetary File System
Download
]]> Download

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

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

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

In security, the InterPlanetary File System

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

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

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

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

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 4885 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 346 – It’s Not You, It’s Me (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-346-its-not-you-its-me-mp3/ Wed, 21 Oct 2020 04:37:58 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4716 Then, our news lots of releases, a new feature and a birthday
In security, we look at an IoT bug
Download
]]>

Download

1:45 Wanderings
55:45 The News
1:03:04 Security Update
1:10:57 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo makes web apps, Moss sends a Telegram, Joe gets an upgrade, Josh fights with a mic, and Bo gets a gnome.

Then, our news lots of releases, a new feature and a birthday

In security, we look at an IoT bug

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • The Chromium based browsers have fixed the AMD/Graphical issue that was plaguing me. Waiting for a new beta update from the Linux Mint Chromium package to test that. But so far, Linux Mint’s Chromium is stable, but still has the issue. Can’t remember if it was Dan or Joe from Linux User Space that said resizing the windows fixes it. It does!
    • Web Apps is my new favorite thing. I use it with Plex and Nextcloud mostly with the Linux Mint Chromium.
    • World of Warcraft crashes on launch from Lutris. Sad times.
  • Moss
    • I have the FuzZ400 about as good as it’s going to be, still need to hit F1 during all boots. This makes it hard to reboot from my recliner, as the F1 key on the wireless mini keyboard does not function. (Note: buy new wireless keyboard with real F-keys when possible.) 
    • I installed the power supply on my mini desktop. It works again. I put my old 2 Tb spinning metal drive in it. All the partitions were there, I thought I had 4 installations on it… but only the Mint partition had a distro in it, and the swap partition had been added to the partition which followed where it was. I reestablished the swap partition, and installed an OEM of Mint 20 Cinnamon on it. I’m looking for a local student to give it to. I have a monitor for it, but I haven’t looked to see if I have a working spare keyboard or mouse.
    • On Tuesday the 13th, I went looking for a Telegram group about Bodhi Linux, and didn’t find any in English so I set up one — with help, as I’ve never done this before. I posted it to all my Linux groups and also to both Bodhi Forums and my LQ blog. We have 20 members now, including lead dev Robert Wiley (aka YLee).
    • I had a great conversation with YLee in the group yesterday, lots of new stuff, including that there is a pre-alpha release now of Bodhi 6.0, available both with Moksha and E24. There is no 6.0 repo yet, but YLee stated that some programs from the 5.1 repo MAY work, such as the bodhi-printing app, no guarantees. I’m a Bodhi-loving fool, I currently have 3 installations on my laptop – 5.1, 6.0 with Moksha and 6.0 with Enlightenment E24.
    • Moksha development has far surpassed E17 levels, and has included most of the improvements through E24; however, unlike the main Enlightenment line, YLee accomplished this without changing the stable E17 codebase. 
    • The Bodhi team is mostly just 2 devs now, so please volunteer if you can help. Donations are up and down as well. [$50 this month, $300 last month]
    • In employment news, I still have not gotten paid by Census 2020, but discovered that was my fault. I fixed it, but I could be waiting another 3-4 weeks to receive my paycheck. I have been hired as a substitute teacher by the local school district, but the past two weeks were Fall Break so no work. I interviewed for an actual computer repair position, but was not called back for the second round. 
    • We’re getting near the end of Dead Beat, the 7th book in the Dresden Files series.
  • Joe
    • The GK61S Bluetooth keyboard.  I still think that changing out the battery might be my best bet for maintaining bluetooth connection but overall I am disappointed.  I do like the buttons and the size is useful but having to use it wired is a bit annoying and I don’t know if replacing the battery will actually fix all the issues since it sometimes has a problem staying connected over bluetooth even with external power.  It can work with just the USB-C cable but wire can get in the way.  
      • I had previously thought that most of the Bluetooth connection issues with Linux had been solved but now I am going to need to look into it a bit more
      • Mostly bluetooth seems to suck on the desktop
    • Having fun with the Repetier snap and my 3D printer.  Had to do a lot of fixing and refixing to get it printing again but it is good to go for now.  Still having some problems with ABS even with the enclosure but I am switching back to pla and petg for now.  I did have to build a couple of dry boxes for the filament rolls and hopefully that will help.  Petg is printing pretty good right now.
    • Still figuring out what i want to do with that Lenovo Flex 4.  It is currently running Repetier and hooked up to my printer.  I think I am going to do a bit more conversion of the space that it is in and see if I can make a mini studio.
      • Used it to do the linux lugcast since we are using Jitsi amongst ourselves
        • Used Droidcam for this.  I think i got better resolution over wifi than i did over USB
      • Waiting on a mic stand to come in and will be using it along with the HyperX Quadcast mic it actually came in today but i have not opened it yet
      • Thinking about getting a green screen and seeing how well it works since you can get them for around 20 dollars
    • Finally made the upgrade on my main laptop to Mint 20 following the upgrade path, really nice to not have to jump through all the hoops to get the graphics card working properly.  
      • Reinstalled both Docker and Resilio Sync and all my scripting seems to be working fine
    • I had to install the flatpak for mumble on all my machines.  I guess the most recent update messed with the certificates.  Great to find out as the show is starting
  • Josh Hawk
    • Mic Mayhem! I have been dealing with trying to get good audio out of my mic. I have a Blue Snowball USB Condenser mic right now and for some reason the audio is good sometimes and sounds hollow others. I have tried messing with the software sound settings but nothing seems to help. I just have to turn it on and hope my recording sounds good this time haha 😅.
    • In other news this led me to buy a new dynamic mic! After looking at a ton of reviews I finally decided on believe it or not an Amazon Basics Mic 😱. I found it on eBay for 16$ but I didn’t have an audio interface so it came with a XLR to ¼” audio jack. I plugged it into my Creative Sound Blaster Z sound card and presto my voice sounded much better but alas it was not to be. There was a rhythmic buzzing that I later found out was coming from my sound card 😭. All that to say I am back using my Blue Snowball and am waiting for a new XLR to USB cable that will fix the buzzing issue.
    • One more quick thing. I have finally installed openSUSE on my parents old Gateway PC and am in the process of setting it up. I tried to use the transactional server install and realized that zypper does not work on that so I reinstalled the normal server version.
  • Bo
    • Gnome experiment
      • Fedora 32 getting stuck on boot (gnome display manager)
      • Ubuntu was cool but I feel like it’s not close to “stock” gnome
      • Pop!_OS
        • Great! Love the window tiling feature and how it’s implemented
      • Gnome: it’s not you, it’s me…
    • Still playing card games on tabletop simulator (tts). Yesterday I taught my sister to play Magic.
    • LOTR the card game had an online convention using tts and Discord.
    • Baldur’s Gate 3 – Will it Proton?

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

      • Three flaws in BlueZ, the Bluetooth controller software in the kernel, could lead to code execution, denial of service and a way to map memory for later exfiltration!
      • Updating to kernel 5.9 seems to be the fix, which is easy enough. This bit is incorrect. Intel made a statement. No fix is available.
      • Ubuntu hasn’t backported the fixes to kernel 5.8 as of yet, but surely it’ll show up soon.
    • Zoom has had a wild history with encryption in the past few months. Things like encryption that wasn’t full encryption, encryption for everyone wasn’t really for everyone, and the ability for internal employees were able to log into supposedly encrypted sessions defeating the entire purpose of encryption.
    • In a four phase approach Zoom is finally rolling out end to end encryption. For now, during phase one, it’ll be opt in only. It’s essentially a beta test.
    • The second phase will roll out in 2021.

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be Sunday, November 1, 2020 at 2 pm US Central Standard Time, 8 pm UTC. Check when this will be in your local timezone at https://everytimezone.com/s/7d8c1119.
  • Note both the US and UK will have time changes (“fall back” 1 hour) between mintCasts 346 & 347, so those times remain the same, but this makes the UTC time 1 hour later than before.

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 4716 mintCast 346 – It’s Not You, It’s Me https://mintcast.org/mintcast-346-its-not-you-its-me/ Wed, 21 Oct 2020 04:20:17 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4709 Then, our news lots of releases, a new feature and a birthday
In security, we look at an IoT bug
Download
]]>

Download

1:45 Wanderings
55:45 The News
1:03:04 Security Update
1:10:57 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo makes web apps, Moss sends a Telegram, Joe gets an upgrade, Josh fights with a mic, and Bo gets a gnome.

Then, our news lots of releases, a new feature and a birthday

In security, we look at an IoT bug

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • The Chromium based browsers have fixed the AMD/Graphical issue that was plaguing me. Waiting for a new beta update from the Linux Mint Chromium package to test that. But so far, Linux Mint’s Chromium is stable, but still has the issue. Can’t remember if it was Dan or Joe from Linux User Space that said resizing the windows fixes it. It does!
    • Web Apps is my new favorite thing. I use it with Plex and Nextcloud mostly with the Linux Mint Chromium.
    • World of Warcraft crashes on launch from Lutris. Sad times.
  • Moss
    • I have the FuzZ400 about as good as it’s going to be, still need to hit F1 during all boots. This makes it hard to reboot from my recliner, as the F1 key on the wireless mini keyboard does not function. (Note: buy new wireless keyboard with real F-keys when possible.) 
    • I installed the power supply on my mini desktop. It works again. I put my old 2 Tb spinning metal drive in it. All the partitions were there, I thought I had 4 installations on it… but only the Mint partition had a distro in it, and the swap partition had been added to the partition which followed where it was. I reestablished the swap partition, and installed an OEM of Mint 20 Cinnamon on it. I’m looking for a local student to give it to. I have a monitor for it, but I haven’t looked to see if I have a working spare keyboard or mouse.
    • On Tuesday the 13th, I went looking for a Telegram group about Bodhi Linux, and didn’t find any in English so I set up one — with help, as I’ve never done this before. I posted it to all my Linux groups and also to both Bodhi Forums and my LQ blog. We have 20 members now, including lead dev Robert Wiley (aka YLee).
    • I had a great conversation with YLee in the group yesterday, lots of new stuff, including that there is a pre-alpha release now of Bodhi 6.0, available both with Moksha and E24. There is no 6.0 repo yet, but YLee stated that some programs from the 5.1 repo MAY work, such as the bodhi-printing app, no guarantees. I’m a Bodhi-loving fool, I currently have 3 installations on my laptop – 5.1, 6.0 with Moksha and 6.0 with Enlightenment E24.
    • Moksha development has far surpassed E17 levels, and has included most of the improvements through E24; however, unlike the main Enlightenment line, YLee accomplished this without changing the stable E17 codebase. 
    • The Bodhi team is mostly just 2 devs now, so please volunteer if you can help. Donations are up and down as well. [$50 this month, $300 last month]
    • In employment news, I still have not gotten paid by Census 2020, but discovered that was my fault. I fixed it, but I could be waiting another 3-4 weeks to receive my paycheck. I have been hired as a substitute teacher by the local school district, but the past two weeks were Fall Break so no work. I interviewed for an actual computer repair position, but was not called back for the second round. 
    • We’re getting near the end of Dead Beat, the 7th book in the Dresden Files series.
  • Joe
    • The GK61S Bluetooth keyboard.  I still think that changing out the battery might be my best bet for maintaining bluetooth connection but overall I am disappointed.  I do like the buttons and the size is useful but having to use it wired is a bit annoying and I don’t know if replacing the battery will actually fix all the issues since it sometimes has a problem staying connected over bluetooth even with external power.  It can work with just the USB-C cable but wire can get in the way.  
      • I had previously thought that most of the Bluetooth connection issues with Linux had been solved but now I am going to need to look into it a bit more
      • Mostly bluetooth seems to suck on the desktop
    • Having fun with the Repetier snap and my 3D printer.  Had to do a lot of fixing and refixing to get it printing again but it is good to go for now.  Still having some problems with ABS even with the enclosure but I am switching back to pla and petg for now.  I did have to build a couple of dry boxes for the filament rolls and hopefully that will help.  Petg is printing pretty good right now.
    • Still figuring out what i want to do with that Lenovo Flex 4.  It is currently running Repetier and hooked up to my printer.  I think I am going to do a bit more conversion of the space that it is in and see if I can make a mini studio.
      • Used it to do the linux lugcast since we are using Jitsi amongst ourselves
        • Used Droidcam for this.  I think i got better resolution over wifi than i did over USB
      • Waiting on a mic stand to come in and will be using it along with the HyperX Quadcast mic it actually came in today but i have not opened it yet
      • Thinking about getting a green screen and seeing how well it works since you can get them for around 20 dollars
    • Finally made the upgrade on my main laptop to Mint 20 following the upgrade path, really nice to not have to jump through all the hoops to get the graphics card working properly.  
      • Reinstalled both Docker and Resilio Sync and all my scripting seems to be working fine
    • I had to install the flatpak for mumble on all my machines.  I guess the most recent update messed with the certificates.  Great to find out as the show is starting
  • Josh Hawk
    • Mic Mayhem! I have been dealing with trying to get good audio out of my mic. I have a Blue Snowball USB Condenser mic right now and for some reason the audio is good sometimes and sounds hollow others. I have tried messing with the software sound settings but nothing seems to help. I just have to turn it on and hope my recording sounds good this time haha 😅.
    • In other news this led me to buy a new dynamic mic! After looking at a ton of reviews I finally decided on believe it or not an Amazon Basics Mic 😱. I found it on eBay for 16$ but I didn’t have an audio interface so it came with a XLR to ¼” audio jack. I plugged it into my Creative Sound Blaster Z sound card and presto my voice sounded much better but alas it was not to be. There was a rhythmic buzzing that I later found out was coming from my sound card 😭. All that to say I am back using my Blue Snowball and am waiting for a new XLR to USB cable that will fix the buzzing issue.
    • One more quick thing. I have finally installed openSUSE on my parents old Gateway PC and am in the process of setting it up. I tried to use the transactional server install and realized that zypper does not work on that so I reinstalled the normal server version.
  • Bo
    • Gnome experiment
      • Fedora 32 getting stuck on boot (gnome display manager)
      • Ubuntu was cool but I feel like it’s not close to “stock” gnome
      • Pop!_OS
        • Great! Love the window tiling feature and how it’s implemented
      • Gnome: it’s not you, it’s me…
    • Still playing card games on tabletop simulator (tts). Yesterday I taught my sister to play Magic.
    • LOTR the card game had an online convention using tts and Discord.
    • Baldur’s Gate 3 – Will it Proton?

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

      • Three flaws in BlueZ, the Bluetooth controller software in the kernel, could lead to code execution, denial of service and a way to map memory for later exfiltration!
      • Updating to kernel 5.9 seems to be the fix, which is easy enough. This bit is incorrect. Intel made a statement. No fix is available.
      • Ubuntu hasn’t backported the fixes to kernel 5.8 as of yet, but surely it’ll show up soon.
    • Zoom has had a wild history with encryption in the past few months. Things like encryption that wasn’t full encryption, encryption for everyone wasn’t really for everyone, and the ability for internal employees were able to log into supposedly encrypted sessions defeating the entire purpose of encryption.
    • In a four phase approach Zoom is finally rolling out end to end encryption. For now, during phase one, it’ll be opt in only. It’s essentially a beta test.
    • The second phase will roll out in 2021.

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be Sunday, November 1, 2020 at 2 pm US Central Standard Time, 8 pm UTC. Check when this will be in your local timezone at https://everytimezone.com/s/7d8c1119.
  • Note both the US and UK will have time changes (“fall back” 1 hour) between mintCasts 346 & 347, so those times remain the same, but this makes the UTC time 1 hour later than before.

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 4709 mintCast 345 – Hawking Chromium (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-345-hawking-chromium-mp3/ Wed, 07 Oct 2020 06:00:53 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4691 Then, our news Linux Mint gets some love, the Gorilla’s in beta and so is Fedora
In Security, we chat with Josh
Download
]]>

Download

1:42 Wanderings
44:23 News
1:07:43 Security
1:17:24 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo’s chromium based pixels do a dance, Tony Hughes plays with chaos, Moss has a Fuzzyputer, Joe has an idea… pad, and Josh butters his machine.

Then, our news Linux Mint gets some love, the Gorilla’s in beta and so is Fedora

In Security, we chat with Josh

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • Chromium graphical glitches
      • Playing with Batocera again
    • Tony H
      • Since the last show I have been playing with the waterslide decal paper again, this time to make decals for coffee mugs, I have done a couple of mintCast Mugs and a Distrohoppers Digest Mug. While after they have been cured in the oven for a little while they are hand washable it is suggested if you want to make them dishwasher proof then you use a special lamination sheet during the process, as I don’t have a dishwasher I’ve not done this and they have stood up to hand washing in warm soapy water so I’m happy. 
      • I have again travelled to Woodbrooke so I am in studio Z on the 15” Dell laptop that stands in as my podcast PC when on the road.
      • I’ve written another couple of articles in my Full Circle series on podcast production.
      • So I was wondering what to review on Distrohoppers for the next show and looking on Distrowatch came across KaOS which is a rolling distribution built on Qt and KDE, and uses the Pacman package system, but is totally independent of any other OS. I’ve had a few issues with Dual Booting but it is on one of my Toshiba Z30’s as a solo install.
      • I made a video tutorial of using Drive to store and share files, for a friend using the OBS screen capture facility. So as well as showing her in person she has the tutorial as an aid memoir if not sure what to do.
    • Moss
      • I received a computer from our team’s audio editor, Fuzzy P. This is an HP Z400 workstation, with a quad-core Xeon processor running at 3.20 GHz, 16 Gb RAM, and my first-ever Nvidia graphics card, an FX-1500. I got some help from Dale Miracle and others in our Telegram group on some issues I ran into. I removed the unnecessary RAID card.  It also has only USB 2 ports but lots of them. I will be purchasing a USB 3 card this week, to be installed in the slot vacated by the RAID card. I briefly ran this machine with my old 2 Tb spinning metal drive, then replaced that with my 512 Gb SSD. It still does not boot all the way through, I need to hit F1 when prompted, but it boots fine after that. I’m using the FuzZ400 for this broadcast and will presumably use it for future podcasts.
      • The FuzZ400 would not see the SSD at first, so I threw GPartEd at it and it got recognized. There are 6 distro partitions on this drive, with one of them unused. It wouldn’t boot to Mint, so I installed a fresh Mint 20 MATE on it, which worked fine, and the Nvidia driver was added during updates. I checked the Ubuntu Unity partition and did not have to reinstall, plus it added the Nvidia driver with ease. Bodhi required a reinstall, but it installed the driver during initial installation. On the other hand, Gecko STATIC found the driver and made it available, but did not give me any hints on how to install it, and ditto for OpenMandriva.
      • The other computer I was given is DOA, but might have some good parts. And I haven’t yet installed the new power supply on my old desktop mini.
      • After Episode 16 of Distrohoppers’ Digest, I removed 3 of the 8 distros on my laptop, and have installed Pop!_OS in one of the freed spaces. I’m still looking for what to add to the other two partitions. Does this mean I’ll be reviewing Pop!_OS for October? Wait and see…
      • Episode 15 of Distrohoppers’ Digest has exceeded 600 downloads, a new peak for us. We’re getting a lot of positive feedback on various groups.
      • I got new tires on my car today. Quite a saga here but no need to go into it. 
      • My mother is back in the rehabilitation facility after breaking the pin in her hip.
      • My wife and I are racing through Dead Beat (Book 7) in Dresden Files. He’s on the clock trying to find out how to invoke the Erlking. So I’ll just invoke Joe right now and let him talk about his two weeks.
    • Joe
      • Catching up on podcasts for a little while
      • Also going to listen to a classic from Raymond Feist 
        • Magician Apprentice and Magician Master
      • Battle Grounds from Jim Butcher the most recent Dresden Files book
        • Did enjoy although I am seeing some continuity issues
      • Alastair Stone novels
        • More urban fiction.  Not terrible.
      • Rebuilding a few parts on my 3D printer, lets see how well it works
        • Had to pull apart the hot end because of a clog between the ptfe tubing and the throat, ordered a new block and throat but got the wrong size so I had to clean up the old one and use it again
        • That seemed to work just fine
        • While I had it out and apart I noticed that the teeth on the extruder gear were a little worn but I decided to try it anyway
        • Also while I had it apart I replaced the hot bed with one that wasn’t warped.  This helped but the Y carriage is also warped so it is not perfect.
        • It seemed like the gear was not providing enough force so I decided to change it and the y carriage at the same time
        • This turned out fine and the calibration worked but it turned out the issue was moisture in the filament which was making it difficult to extrude.
        • So after a couple more teardowns and rebuilds I was still having trouble with extrusion even with a fresh roll so I redid the ptfe tubing again but then the thermistor broke and the one I replaced it with was broke but the third one worked fine.
        • Got a good print in
        • Was not able to get CURA to connect to my 3D printer for whatever reason
        • But I was able to get repetier to connect and send commands.  More testing is required
          • It was able to send commands and read the internal sd card
          • I can still use CURA to slice on my other machines and then send the gcode over to the laptop that I have set up and use either X2Go or Octoprint to handle everything
          • Gives me a reason to setup octopi and see what I can do with it
      • Researching building a full keyboard on my own, not because I think it is a good idea but because I think it would be fun
        • Seems like it would be an expensive hobby to get into.
        • Probably couldn’t turn around and sell them to make my money back and I don’t know if I will be able to do a good job at it
        • I prefer my hobbies pay for themselves
        • Currently looking at building a Sick-68 keyboard which seems to be where most people start the process.
        • I did purchase a 60 percent kit and put in the rest of the blues that I have and a set of keycaps.  I already know that the keyboard will not meet spouse approval as it is very loud.
        • Plus the use of the function key for many things is going to take some getting used to
        • But still it is fun and I like it. But I do think that a full keyboard might do better for me
        • Also the battery on the board seems to not hold a charge for very long and take a lot of time to charge.  I am going to look and see what I have that might make a better replacement
        • But the keys are super smooth and I know that Leo will hate it
      • Picked up an ideapad flex 4 for a decent price. 
        • Not the greatest laptop in the world but I am liking the folding screen and after I switched the hard drive to an SSD and installed LM, it is going pretty smooth.  Although I think I should also upgrade the ram to 8Gb from 4 and that would help a lot 
        • The spinning disk that was in it before I am pretty sure had some issues.  It was running windows but after it ran updates it would have problems rebooting and coming back from suspend.  Although the issue with suspend would be solved by a power cycle.
        • I plan on playing around with this device for now but I think I will reinstall Windows on it and pass it on to one of the kids.  Either my middle child or my youngest depending on need.  
    • Josh Hawk
      • Issues and solutions with btrfs! I set up a 3 way raid 1 on three 2tb disks. I decided to use one of those disks to install lmde4 on and I thought since it’s a 3 way raid 1 it would just have the data on the other 2 disks. I did this, and then the other 2 disks would not mount. I spent hours trying to fix this to no avail. Finally I came across a forum post that mentioned needing to remove a disk from the btrfs raid before using it. At that point I felt so stupid cause the solution was so simple. All I have to do is add the drive back to the raid, do a scrub and balance to get the data correctly on the disk, then delete it from the raid and I can use it as I would any other drive.
  • New hardware!  I just purchased a 1Tb NVME M.2 SSD. It has 3400mb read and 3000mb write (not that I will ever need that speed but I have it!).

THE NEWS:

Clicking the burger menu, “Preferences” -> “Miscellaneous”, and add the following line in “Extra MPV Options”:

hwdec=auto-safe
    • Driver Manager having issues with pulling in recommended packages for Nvidia. To fix this:
      • APT recommends will become enabled in Linux Mint 19.x (they already are in Mint 20)
      • The Driver Manager will switch to packagekit.
      • We’ll soon backport new versions of mintsystem and mintdrivers to all 19.x releases and to Linux Mint 20.
    • A bug, noted here and here, affected people with USB printers when they upgraded from Linux Mint 19.3 to 20.
      • Fix it by removing the ippusbxd package.
      • In the future, the package may be replaced with ipp-usb
    • The clickable area on the close, maximize and minimize buttons will be bigger with no change to the looks.
    • Tray icons (fcitx, KDE connect, Redshift, etc.) got a few tweaks.
    • Acknowledgement of the Cinnamon Spices downtime in early September. Migrated to a new server and framework. Report issues!
  • Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla Beta Is Out
  • Fedora 33 in Beta

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • To Josh: Where do you stand on Security/Privacy vs Convenience > aka tinfoil hat?

Announcements:

Our next show will be on October 18, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC. Check https://everytimezone.com/s/a5d26573  to convert to your local time.

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 4691 mintCast 345 – Hawking Chromium https://mintcast.org/mintcast-345-hawking-chromium/ Wed, 07 Oct 2020 05:37:13 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4686 Then, our news Linux Mint gets some love, the Gorilla’s in beta and so is Fedora
In Security, we chat with Josh
Download
]]>

Download

1:42 Wanderings
44:23 News
1:07:43 Security
1:17:24 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo’s chromium based pixels do a dance, Tony Hughes plays with chaos, Moss has a Fuzzyputer, Joe has an idea… pad, and Josh butters his machine.

Then, our news Linux Mint gets some love, the Gorilla’s in beta and so is Fedora

In Security, we chat with Josh

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

    • Leo
      • Chromium graphical glitches
      • Playing with Batocera again
    • Tony H
      • Since the last show I have been playing with the waterslide decal paper again, this time to make decals for coffee mugs, I have done a couple of mintCast Mugs and a Distrohoppers Digest Mug. While after they have been cured in the oven for a little while they are hand washable it is suggested if you want to make them dishwasher proof then you use a special lamination sheet during the process, as I don’t have a dishwasher I’ve not done this and they have stood up to hand washing in warm soapy water so I’m happy. 
      • I have again travelled to Woodbrooke so I am in studio Z on the 15” Dell laptop that stands in as my podcast PC when on the road.
      • I’ve written another couple of articles in my Full Circle series on podcast production.
      • So I was wondering what to review on Distrohoppers for the next show and looking on Distrowatch came across KaOS which is a rolling distribution built on Qt and KDE, and uses the Pacman package system, but is totally independent of any other OS. I’ve had a few issues with Dual Booting but it is on one of my Toshiba Z30’s as a solo install.
      • I made a video tutorial of using Drive to store and share files, for a friend using the OBS screen capture facility. So as well as showing her in person she has the tutorial as an aid memoir if not sure what to do.
    • Moss
      • I received a computer from our team’s audio editor, Fuzzy P. This is an HP Z400 workstation, with a quad-core Xeon processor running at 3.20 GHz, 16 Gb RAM, and my first-ever Nvidia graphics card, an FX-1500. I got some help from Dale Miracle and others in our Telegram group on some issues I ran into. I removed the unnecessary RAID card.  It also has only USB 2 ports but lots of them. I will be purchasing a USB 3 card this week, to be installed in the slot vacated by the RAID card. I briefly ran this machine with my old 2 Tb spinning metal drive, then replaced that with my 512 Gb SSD. It still does not boot all the way through, I need to hit F1 when prompted, but it boots fine after that. I’m using the FuzZ400 for this broadcast and will presumably use it for future podcasts.
      • The FuzZ400 would not see the SSD at first, so I threw GPartEd at it and it got recognized. There are 6 distro partitions on this drive, with one of them unused. It wouldn’t boot to Mint, so I installed a fresh Mint 20 MATE on it, which worked fine, and the Nvidia driver was added during updates. I checked the Ubuntu Unity partition and did not have to reinstall, plus it added the Nvidia driver with ease. Bodhi required a reinstall, but it installed the driver during initial installation. On the other hand, Gecko STATIC found the driver and made it available, but did not give me any hints on how to install it, and ditto for OpenMandriva.
      • The other computer I was given is DOA, but might have some good parts. And I haven’t yet installed the new power supply on my old desktop mini.
      • After Episode 16 of Distrohoppers’ Digest, I removed 3 of the 8 distros on my laptop, and have installed Pop!_OS in one of the freed spaces. I’m still looking for what to add to the other two partitions. Does this mean I’ll be reviewing Pop!_OS for October? Wait and see…
      • Episode 15 of Distrohoppers’ Digest has exceeded 600 downloads, a new peak for us. We’re getting a lot of positive feedback on various groups.
      • I got new tires on my car today. Quite a saga here but no need to go into it. 
      • My mother is back in the rehabilitation facility after breaking the pin in her hip.
      • My wife and I are racing through Dead Beat (Book 7) in Dresden Files. He’s on the clock trying to find out how to invoke the Erlking. So I’ll just invoke Joe right now and let him talk about his two weeks.
    • Joe
      • Catching up on podcasts for a little while
      • Also going to listen to a classic from Raymond Feist 
        • Magician Apprentice and Magician Master
      • Battle Grounds from Jim Butcher the most recent Dresden Files book
        • Did enjoy although I am seeing some continuity issues
      • Alastair Stone novels
        • More urban fiction.  Not terrible.
      • Rebuilding a few parts on my 3D printer, lets see how well it works
        • Had to pull apart the hot end because of a clog between the ptfe tubing and the throat, ordered a new block and throat but got the wrong size so I had to clean up the old one and use it again
        • That seemed to work just fine
        • While I had it out and apart I noticed that the teeth on the extruder gear were a little worn but I decided to try it anyway
        • Also while I had it apart I replaced the hot bed with one that wasn’t warped.  This helped but the Y carriage is also warped so it is not perfect.
        • It seemed like the gear was not providing enough force so I decided to change it and the y carriage at the same time
        • This turned out fine and the calibration worked but it turned out the issue was moisture in the filament which was making it difficult to extrude.
        • So after a couple more teardowns and rebuilds I was still having trouble with extrusion even with a fresh roll so I redid the ptfe tubing again but then the thermistor broke and the one I replaced it with was broke but the third one worked fine.
        • Got a good print in
        • Was not able to get CURA to connect to my 3D printer for whatever reason
        • But I was able to get repetier to connect and send commands.  More testing is required
          • It was able to send commands and read the internal sd card
          • I can still use CURA to slice on my other machines and then send the gcode over to the laptop that I have set up and use either X2Go or Octoprint to handle everything
          • Gives me a reason to setup octopi and see what I can do with it
      • Researching building a full keyboard on my own, not because I think it is a good idea but because I think it would be fun
        • Seems like it would be an expensive hobby to get into.
        • Probably couldn’t turn around and sell them to make my money back and I don’t know if I will be able to do a good job at it
        • I prefer my hobbies pay for themselves
        • Currently looking at building a Sick-68 keyboard which seems to be where most people start the process.
        • I did purchase a 60 percent kit and put in the rest of the blues that I have and a set of keycaps.  I already know that the keyboard will not meet spouse approval as it is very loud.
        • Plus the use of the function key for many things is going to take some getting used to
        • But still it is fun and I like it. But I do think that a full keyboard might do better for me
        • Also the battery on the board seems to not hold a charge for very long and take a lot of time to charge.  I am going to look and see what I have that might make a better replacement
        • But the keys are super smooth and I know that Leo will hate it
      • Picked up an ideapad flex 4 for a decent price. 
        • Not the greatest laptop in the world but I am liking the folding screen and after I switched the hard drive to an SSD and installed LM, it is going pretty smooth.  Although I think I should also upgrade the ram to 8Gb from 4 and that would help a lot 
        • The spinning disk that was in it before I am pretty sure had some issues.  It was running windows but after it ran updates it would have problems rebooting and coming back from suspend.  Although the issue with suspend would be solved by a power cycle.
        • I plan on playing around with this device for now but I think I will reinstall Windows on it and pass it on to one of the kids.  Either my middle child or my youngest depending on need.  
    • Josh Hawk
      • Issues and solutions with btrfs! I set up a 3 way raid 1 on three 2tb disks. I decided to use one of those disks to install lmde4 on and I thought since it’s a 3 way raid 1 it would just have the data on the other 2 disks. I did this, and then the other 2 disks would not mount. I spent hours trying to fix this to no avail. Finally I came across a forum post that mentioned needing to remove a disk from the btrfs raid before using it. At that point I felt so stupid cause the solution was so simple. All I have to do is add the drive back to the raid, do a scrub and balance to get the data correctly on the disk, then delete it from the raid and I can use it as I would any other drive.
  • New hardware!  I just purchased a 1Tb NVME M.2 SSD. It has 3400mb read and 3000mb write (not that I will ever need that speed but I have it!).

THE NEWS:

Clicking the burger menu, “Preferences” -> “Miscellaneous”, and add the following line in “Extra MPV Options”:

hwdec=auto-safe
    • Driver Manager having issues with pulling in recommended packages for Nvidia. To fix this:
      • APT recommends will become enabled in Linux Mint 19.x (they already are in Mint 20)
      • The Driver Manager will switch to packagekit.
      • We’ll soon backport new versions of mintsystem and mintdrivers to all 19.x releases and to Linux Mint 20.
    • A bug, noted here and here, affected people with USB printers when they upgraded from Linux Mint 19.3 to 20.
      • Fix it by removing the ippusbxd package.
      • In the future, the package may be replaced with ipp-usb
    • The clickable area on the close, maximize and minimize buttons will be bigger with no change to the looks.
    • Tray icons (fcitx, KDE connect, Redshift, etc.) got a few tweaks.
    • Acknowledgement of the Cinnamon Spices downtime in early September. Migrated to a new server and framework. Report issues!
  • Ubuntu 20.10 Groovy Gorilla Beta Is Out
  • Fedora 33 in Beta

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • To Josh: Where do you stand on Security/Privacy vs Convenience > aka tinfoil hat?

Announcements:

Our next show will be on October 18, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC. Check https://everytimezone.com/s/a5d26573  to convert to your local time.

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 1:19:26 4686 mintCast 334 – Natural 20 (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-334-natural-20-mp3/ Wed, 06 May 2020 03:51:13 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4385 Then, in the news, we’ll hit the Linux Mint Monthly News. And Releases! Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro and more increment by 1!
In security, GitLab pays $20,000
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, I dive into both Ubuntu and Fedora, Moss hops around as usual, Tony Watts tinkers with new audio gear, and Joe recommends devices to family.

Then, in the news, we’ll hit the Linux Mint Monthly News. And Releases! Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro and more increment by 1!

In security, GitLab pays $20,000

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

  • Leo
    • I’ve secretly been using Fedora 31 for a few months on my desktop. Just testing, trying out stock gnome, and really just getting the feel for how the other side of the Debian/Red Hat divide live. It’s actually quite good.
    • Just yesterday, I upgraded to Fedora 32 and everything went off without a hitch.
    • For the full in-depth review, I’ll be on Distro Hopper’s Digest episode 13!
  • Moss
    • I installed Kubuntu on the partition which had held KDE neon. I had intended to  install it on the partition containing Ubuntu Studio 20.04 Beta, but I missed. No great loss, as they are different sides of the same coin. But that meant I still had to find something to replace Studio with.I asked the opinions of the DHD group and came up with Fedora, but then could not work my way successfully through the installer. 
    • After much thought, I went back to Sabayon. This time I did everything the right way, following the First Time Wiki. Using a USB2 stick, and installing to a bare metal spinning drive, I began at 22:52 and completed the job at 01:15, with no need to update my bootloader. 2 hours 23 minutes. That sure beats the 4+ hours it took the first time, when I did not do things like scan for better mirrors as told to in the wiki.
    • I’ve been having chats with listener Kevan in Ghana who is working on his own derivative of Slackware called Allegiant OS. He is now on his 100th revision. Not easy to do with a young wife and new baby girl.
    • Tony Hughes and I are getting ready for Episode 013 of Distrohoppers’ Digest, with special guest Leo Chavez! We’ll be recording on May 10th. Tony is reviewing Q4OS, an updated version, I’ll be doing Ubuntu Mate 20.04, and Leo is going to look at Fedora. He will probably even talk about gaming on Linux, something Tony and I just don’t do.
    • Last night I tried sudo apt install stacer in Ubuntu MATE. It installed. So Stacer is now in the Ubuntu repos.
    • This morning Mullvad is not creating a tunnel, so all feeds are blocked. This may be a feature of Ubuntu MATE 20.04 but I’ve been using it for weeks now with no issues. I have dropped a support note to Sanny at Mullvad. It could also be a temporary issue with Comcast…
    • Still reading Summer Knight, book 4 of Dresden Files. Watched four episodes of the 2007 TV show, still scratching our heads over why they didn’t actually use any material from the books.
    • I continue to heal from the car accident and look forward to finding employment, a hard thing to do in the days of COVID-19.  I’m finally getting the use of my right shoulder back, it’s about 70% today with some catches and pops. There has been more “real life” than “computer life” this fortnite, although I have of course kept all my distros updated and gotten ready for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest.
  • Tony Watts
    • New audio setup!
      • Presonus 24 C audio interface
      • MKL V57M condenser mic with shock mount
      • Works great on Dell 7130  tablet
      • Sadly, crashed and burned on my podcasting desktop – had not tested until right before the show
    • Redid retropie SD for the arcade cabinet, had become corrupted
      • Started from scratch, used Etcher 
      • Buster Version, upgrade by one version
      • Only bizarre issue, partition was created with almost no free space – had to resize partition using Gparted.  After that, worked fine
      • After configuring controllers, etc, made a backup (like Joe told me to)
    • Repaired/upgraded a laptop
      • Asus X550CA, touch screen 2013 laptop
      • Wouldn’t boot, windows had issues, expired antivirus, slow…
      • Upgraded to SSD and clean win10 install
      • Updated BIOS firmware
      • Much faster, but has a problem with proper wake/shutdown/restart
        • Not a show stopper but can’t use Sleep ahd have to use button to completely power down
  • Joe
    • Finished Nate Temple series
      • Pretty good. I do recommend
      • Decent length books
      • But I didn’t realize that there is a second series that kept getting referenced and had to keep asking myself if I had missed something in the previous books
      • Which I had so now I am listening to the companion series Feathers and Fire 
      • There is also another companion series called “Phantom Queen Diaries”
    • 3D printer has broken down a couple more times and been resurrected. Hopefully after replacing the heating element for a second time it will stick around for a while.  But I did order 5 of them so if it happens again I will have a quick replacement.
      • Not a difficult fix. One screw and solder 2 wires.  Put it back together and run a pid tune so the machine is tuned for the new heater.
      • Do not set the temp before running the tune it needs to be cooler than the target temperature or you will get large variances.
    • Was able to get a set of 10 broken Skullcandy Crushers for a good price
      • I have 4 of them working and looking like new and have put them up on the market for sale. 
      • I have not posted to ebay yet but if someone wants to buy one let me know
      • 4 of them I was able to 3D print new hinges for and while they do look different and less refined but they work and from what others have said it should be fairly sturdy
      • I may sell 3 of those as well and just keep one of them for myself but will sell at a lower price since the printed hinge does not look as refined
      • They do sound really good but they are not comfortable for me because they sit on my ears
    • Printed some headphone earcup adapters for the XB700 and the Skullcandy Crushers 
      • The adapter for the XB700 is awesome.  Changes the size of the earcup from 3 inches to 4 and I barely notice that I am wearing them all day for work.
      • Still tweaking the adapter for the Crushers but I am hopeful for similar results 
        • Update has a higher clamping force then the XB700 but still a vast improvement
      • The XB700 was fairly easy to do because it has a perfectly round cup.  The Crushers are more kind of egg shaped so I am trying out a couple of things.
    • Also printed some adapters for the coasters for my side table.  It has a large groove in the wood that if you don’t get the coaster on there just right it will tip your glass over so I made some inserts that exactly fit the grooves and then glued the coasters onto them so now my water glass is safe.  
    • Also have plans for the last 2 Skullcandy Crushers involving some of the Sony TV headsets that have the same size hooks and a large number of wires going across.  So I will move them over and see if they work.  This will also free up some drivers that should be the correct size of the monoprice DJ headset that Dustin sent me and I should be able to do a swap and see how it sounds.  Need to still find or order a couple of small parts
      • Found one of the sets of buttons I had lost but it is broken
      • Still looking for the other one
      • Or a printable version
      • I may try to design my own in tinkercad
    • Ordered some silicone socks for my hot end.  They showed up today.
      • Hopefully once they are installed it will prevent the filament from sticking to the hotend.
      • The insulating cotton was damaged when I replaced the heating element.
    • Both my cousin and my uncle contacted me over the last two weeks for computer suggestions
      • My cousin made it easy with a set budget and requirements.
        • Found him a pretty good MSI gaming laptop on eBay that met all his requirements 
      • My uncle not so much
        • He had his heart set on a server that he had found locally with a bunch of sas drives that he wanted to use as a desktop.
        • Explained that it could be done but it would not be as simple as the plug and play that he was used to.
        • I think in the end he just wanted to make sure he got to pick it
    • Attempted to replace the power port on a Transformer T100TA tablet.  
      • Failed miserably
      • Could not get the new posts to go through 
      • Got the old one off easy enough but just couldn’t get the rest done
    • So I repaired a cheap pair of ear pollution headphones by replacing the band with one from a Skullcandy Hesh 3 and a pair of 3d printed earhooks that I had to heat and reshape a bit.  Not my best work but I did learn that you need to extend the arms all the way before doing a job like that so you don’t have issues when everything is put back together.  Ended the night on a win.
    • Listener Fuzzyp sent me a robot to work on.  Received it yesterday.  For some reason it is only trying to perform the first command given to it.  Will take it apart, clean it up and put it back together and see if that helps.  

The News: 

Security Update: 

  • Critical GitLab Flaw Earns Bounty Hunter $20k
    • This flaw was initially reported back on March 23rd to GitLab, and subsequently patched in GitLab version 12.9.1.
    • The flaw was path-traversal allowed by a function called UploadsRewriter.
    • Simply put, this type of flaw allows an attacker to gain access to files they may not have been able to see. This includes things like security keys and other sensitive files. There didn’t seem to be any restrictions on what could be seen or copied when moving things to a new project.
    • This flaw scored William Bowling $20,000. Congratulations!
    • And update your GitLab instances!

Announcements: 

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, May 17, 2020. That’s 8 pm British Summer Time.

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> full 4385 mintCast 334 – Natural 20 https://mintcast.org/mintcast-334-natural-20/ Wed, 06 May 2020 03:50:56 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4386 Then, in the news, we’ll hit the Linux Mint Monthly News. And Releases! Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro and more increment by 1!
In security, GitLab pays $20,000
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, I dive into both Ubuntu and Fedora, Moss hops around as usual, Tony Watts tinkers with new audio gear, and Joe recommends devices to family.

Then, in the news, we’ll hit the Linux Mint Monthly News. And Releases! Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro and more increment by 1!

In security, GitLab pays $20,000

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

  • Leo
    • I’ve secretly been using Fedora 31 for a few months on my desktop. Just testing, trying out stock gnome, and really just getting the feel for how the other side of the Debian/Red Hat divide live. It’s actually quite good.
    • Just yesterday, I upgraded to Fedora 32 and everything went off without a hitch.
    • For the full in-depth review, I’ll be on Distro Hopper’s Digest episode 13!
  • Moss
    • I installed Kubuntu on the partition which had held KDE neon. I had intended to  install it on the partition containing Ubuntu Studio 20.04 Beta, but I missed. No great loss, as they are different sides of the same coin. But that meant I still had to find something to replace Studio with.I asked the opinions of the DHD group and came up with Fedora, but then could not work my way successfully through the installer. 
    • After much thought, I went back to Sabayon. This time I did everything the right way, following the First Time Wiki. Using a USB2 stick, and installing to a bare metal spinning drive, I began at 22:52 and completed the job at 01:15, with no need to update my bootloader. 2 hours 23 minutes. That sure beats the 4+ hours it took the first time, when I did not do things like scan for better mirrors as told to in the wiki.
    • I’ve been having chats with listener Kevan in Ghana who is working on his own derivative of Slackware called Allegiant OS. He is now on his 100th revision. Not easy to do with a young wife and new baby girl.
    • Tony Hughes and I are getting ready for Episode 013 of Distrohoppers’ Digest, with special guest Leo Chavez! We’ll be recording on May 10th. Tony is reviewing Q4OS, an updated version, I’ll be doing Ubuntu Mate 20.04, and Leo is going to look at Fedora. He will probably even talk about gaming on Linux, something Tony and I just don’t do.
    • Last night I tried sudo apt install stacer in Ubuntu MATE. It installed. So Stacer is now in the Ubuntu repos.
    • This morning Mullvad is not creating a tunnel, so all feeds are blocked. This may be a feature of Ubuntu MATE 20.04 but I’ve been using it for weeks now with no issues. I have dropped a support note to Sanny at Mullvad. It could also be a temporary issue with Comcast…
    • Still reading Summer Knight, book 4 of Dresden Files. Watched four episodes of the 2007 TV show, still scratching our heads over why they didn’t actually use any material from the books.
    • I continue to heal from the car accident and look forward to finding employment, a hard thing to do in the days of COVID-19.  I’m finally getting the use of my right shoulder back, it’s about 70% today with some catches and pops. There has been more “real life” than “computer life” this fortnite, although I have of course kept all my distros updated and gotten ready for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest.
  • Tony Watts
    • New audio setup!
      • Presonus 24 C audio interface
      • MKL V57M condenser mic with shock mount
      • Works great on Dell 7130  tablet
      • Sadly, crashed and burned on my podcasting desktop – had not tested until right before the show
    • Redid retropie SD for the arcade cabinet, had become corrupted
      • Started from scratch, used Etcher 
      • Buster Version, upgrade by one version
      • Only bizarre issue, partition was created with almost no free space – had to resize partition using Gparted.  After that, worked fine
      • After configuring controllers, etc, made a backup (like Joe told me to)
    • Repaired/upgraded a laptop
      • Asus X550CA, touch screen 2013 laptop
      • Wouldn’t boot, windows had issues, expired antivirus, slow…
      • Upgraded to SSD and clean win10 install
      • Updated BIOS firmware
      • Much faster, but has a problem with proper wake/shutdown/restart
        • Not a show stopper but can’t use Sleep ahd have to use button to completely power down
  • Joe
    • Finished Nate Temple series
      • Pretty good. I do recommend
      • Decent length books
      • But I didn’t realize that there is a second series that kept getting referenced and had to keep asking myself if I had missed something in the previous books
      • Which I had so now I am listening to the companion series Feathers and Fire 
      • There is also another companion series called “Phantom Queen Diaries”
    • 3D printer has broken down a couple more times and been resurrected. Hopefully after replacing the heating element for a second time it will stick around for a while.  But I did order 5 of them so if it happens again I will have a quick replacement.
      • Not a difficult fix. One screw and solder 2 wires.  Put it back together and run a pid tune so the machine is tuned for the new heater.
      • Do not set the temp before running the tune it needs to be cooler than the target temperature or you will get large variances.
    • Was able to get a set of 10 broken Skullcandy Crushers for a good price
      • I have 4 of them working and looking like new and have put them up on the market for sale. 
      • I have not posted to ebay yet but if someone wants to buy one let me know
      • 4 of them I was able to 3D print new hinges for and while they do look different and less refined but they work and from what others have said it should be fairly sturdy
      • I may sell 3 of those as well and just keep one of them for myself but will sell at a lower price since the printed hinge does not look as refined
      • They do sound really good but they are not comfortable for me because they sit on my ears
    • Printed some headphone earcup adapters for the XB700 and the Skullcandy Crushers 
      • The adapter for the XB700 is awesome.  Changes the size of the earcup from 3 inches to 4 and I barely notice that I am wearing them all day for work.
      • Still tweaking the adapter for the Crushers but I am hopeful for similar results 
        • Update has a higher clamping force then the XB700 but still a vast improvement
      • The XB700 was fairly easy to do because it has a perfectly round cup.  The Crushers are more kind of egg shaped so I am trying out a couple of things.
    • Also printed some adapters for the coasters for my side table.  It has a large groove in the wood that if you don’t get the coaster on there just right it will tip your glass over so I made some inserts that exactly fit the grooves and then glued the coasters onto them so now my water glass is safe.  
    • Also have plans for the last 2 Skullcandy Crushers involving some of the Sony TV headsets that have the same size hooks and a large number of wires going across.  So I will move them over and see if they work.  This will also free up some drivers that should be the correct size of the monoprice DJ headset that Dustin sent me and I should be able to do a swap and see how it sounds.  Need to still find or order a couple of small parts
      • Found one of the sets of buttons I had lost but it is broken
      • Still looking for the other one
      • Or a printable version
      • I may try to design my own in tinkercad
    • Ordered some silicone socks for my hot end.  They showed up today.
      • Hopefully once they are installed it will prevent the filament from sticking to the hotend.
      • The insulating cotton was damaged when I replaced the heating element.
    • Both my cousin and my uncle contacted me over the last two weeks for computer suggestions
      • My cousin made it easy with a set budget and requirements.
        • Found him a pretty good MSI gaming laptop on eBay that met all his requirements 
      • My uncle not so much
        • He had his heart set on a server that he had found locally with a bunch of sas drives that he wanted to use as a desktop.
        • Explained that it could be done but it would not be as simple as the plug and play that he was used to.
        • I think in the end he just wanted to make sure he got to pick it
    • Attempted to replace the power port on a Transformer T100TA tablet.  
      • Failed miserably
      • Could not get the new posts to go through 
      • Got the old one off easy enough but just couldn’t get the rest done
    • So I repaired a cheap pair of ear pollution headphones by replacing the band with one from a Skullcandy Hesh 3 and a pair of 3d printed earhooks that I had to heat and reshape a bit.  Not my best work but I did learn that you need to extend the arms all the way before doing a job like that so you don’t have issues when everything is put back together.  Ended the night on a win.
    • Listener Fuzzyp sent me a robot to work on.  Received it yesterday.  For some reason it is only trying to perform the first command given to it.  Will take it apart, clean it up and put it back together and see if that helps.  

The News: 

Security Update: 

  • Critical GitLab Flaw Earns Bounty Hunter $20k
    • This flaw was initially reported back on March 23rd to GitLab, and subsequently patched in GitLab version 12.9.1.
    • The flaw was path-traversal allowed by a function called UploadsRewriter.
    • Simply put, this type of flaw allows an attacker to gain access to files they may not have been able to see. This includes things like security keys and other sensitive files. There didn’t seem to be any restrictions on what could be seen or copied when moving things to a new project.
    • This flaw scored William Bowling $20,000. Congratulations!
    • And update your GitLab instances!

Announcements: 

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, May 17, 2020. That’s 8 pm British Summer Time.

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> full 4386 mintCast 331 – The Art of Tracking https://mintcast.org/mintcast-331-the-art-of-tracking/ Wed, 25 Mar 2020 05:15:53 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4303 Then, in the news, NPM gets acquired, OBS adds a number, Purism and Pinebook have new releases, Basilisk takes us back in time, and Gnome gets new features.
In security, Edge is coming, and it’s worse than we thought.
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

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

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> full 4303 mintCast 331 – The Art of Tracking (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-331-the-art-of-tracking-mp3/ Wed, 25 Mar 2020 05:15:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4301 Then, in the news, NPM gets acquired, OBS adds a number, Purism and Pinebook have new releases, Basilisk takes us back in time, and Gnome gets new features.
In security, Edge is coming, and it’s worse than we thought.
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

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

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> full 4301 mintCast 330 – Debbie Does Beta https://mintcast.org/mintcast-330-debbie-does-beta/ Wed, 11 Mar 2020 05:01:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4276 Then, our news we have plenty of Linux Mint and LMDE news, Raspberry Pi fixes its USB, apt upgrades, and more.
In security, we find out if AMD’s flaws are as bad as Intel’s.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo tries out LMDE, Bo keeps things to himself, Tony Hughes returns with ALT Linux adventures, Moss boogies from Budgie, and Joe tries out scrcpy (screen copy).

Then, our news we have plenty of Linux Mint and LMDE news, Raspberry Pi fixes its USB, apt upgrades, and more.

In security, we find out if AMD’s flaws are as bad as Intel’s.

Bi-weekly Wanderings:

  • Leo
    • Gave LMDE 4 Beta a whirl. Seems everything is the way you’d expect, new logos and Cinnamon updates that we’ve touched on in previous episodes.
    • The deal breaker for me on the Desktop will be the Kernel 4.19.
    • The laptop would work fine on this version, but it hasn’t budged from LM 19 save for the incremental upgrades to .1, .2 and .3.
    • Not having PPAs directly available is also a sore spot. Some things just aren’t available via AppImage, Snap or Flatpak, and PPAs can fill the gap.
  • Tony H
    • Hi great to be back so since the last show I’ve been up to loads of non Linux geeky stuff. I have been baking sourdough bread several times a week and it really is worth making your own bread. The quality is so good and the flavour is amazing. 
    • Obviously I have been playing around with my model cars a little but a short break away from home down in the south of England to visit friends and some relatives and then a 4 day trip to Birmingham, got in the way a little.
    • The same with Linux, I installed ALT Linux for the upcoming Distrohoppers’ Digest recording, this delayed as I had an emergency root canal filling the day before we were due to record last week but hopefully we are good for next Thursday. But with Vacations and other things that have been going on I have not got around to play with it for as long as I would have liked, sometimes life just gets in the way of things, sometimes I seem to be juggling too many balls in the air at once, and unlike my fellow hosts I can’t even blame work or school for that.       
  • Moss
    • Sorry to miss the last show, things got out of control around here. Still are, a bit. But in the interim, I’ve managed to install OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 on both machines, and have run into a snag on installing Solus on my Galago Pro 2. I topped off my current lineup with Zorin OS Ultimate 15.2, although I’m not satisfied with that choice. It does have a nice Grub menu though. I also tried Ubuntu Budgie 20.04 in advance, with no grub menu customization at all and a few papercuts.
    • As Tony stated, we will record Episode 011 of Distrohoppers’ Digest on Thursday, March 12th. Our schedule is slipping a bit more from our intended monthly podcast, but we’re only human. Our stats are still hovering at just over 400 downloads per episode, although Episode 008 is the most recent to top 400 downloads. This month we will be covering ALT Linux and Ubuntu Budgie.
    • Speaking of the Ubuntu Budgie and my presence on their team, I ran into the same problem as I do all too often here, not enough time and too stressed. I resigned this morning from the project, but said I was still interested in doing the voiceover videos.
    • Listener Dale Miracle upped my game again, buying me a WAVLINK ST-336A USB 3 dual hard drive thingie with extra USB and SD card slots (what Leo and I call a “toaster”) and an Anker 9-port USB 3 hub. So now everything on my machine except for my mini keyboards and microphone are USB3.  I have replaced my underutilized 2 Tb spinning disk with 2 256 Gb SSDs, which run cooler and more quietly. I’ll keep the 2 Tb around as my 2nd Backup.
    • Suzanne and I just finished Fool Moon, the second Dresden FIles book, and have launched into book 3, Grave Peril. It seems to be jumping around a bit in the first few chapters.
    • I continue working in the wrong job with no good end in sight and alternatives looking more meager.
  • Joe
    • Reading
      • Stormlight archive book 3
      • Artemis by Andy Wier 
      • Junkyard druid.
        • Relistened to the whole series since the books are short.
        • Was able to get the 2 newest books as well
      • Takeshi Kovacs novels because Altered Carbon season 2
      • Neil Gaiman American Gods
    • Put my 3d printer back together.  Have a spare board now.
      • Still having problems with prints
      • Will get more into it at a later date.  
      • For just say it ain’t working
    • Netflix Altered Carbon season 2
      • It was good.
      • Very different from book 2 however.  I really enjoyed first season because of how well it went along with the book
      • This was different though and i understand why.  It would have been very difficult to recreate all the things that happened in the book.  But second season while it did have a lot of things that were in none of the books seemed to have more aspects of the things that were included in the third book than it did the second
      • Still you should watch it if you have the chance.  Also read the books because awesome
      • Very adult themed
    • Installed Fedora Workstation on the 7140
      • Looks good and works well with some small exceptions
      • Have not used gnome in a long time and I am really impressed with how far it has come along and how smooth it runs
      • Only problem I am having so far is that the touchpad works at the login screen but becomes unresponsive after login
        • Probably an issue with the drivers trying to load twice
        • But I was able to correct the issue with sleep 45; sudo modprobe -r hid_multitouch; sudo modprobe hid_multitouch;
        • Which i added to the crontab @reboot
        • I also want to set up something similar whenever the keyboard is docked.  This may clear some of the issues that the tablet has with the docking procedure
      • Had to go into alsamixer and disable the hdmi audio in order to get the built in speakers to work
      • Well it was working.  Got a couple of pops after a couple of reboots even though the audio was muted and then now it cant find the internal audio card.  So I think I may have blown the hardware.  
      • Bluetooth audio works
    • Testing out scrcpy which allows me to mirror and interact with my android phone on my linux machine
      • It is free
      • Does not require root
      • Works using adb so you have to turn on debugging
      • 2 thumbs up for me
      • Full screen looks good and i have not noticed any lag
      • Actually using it a lot
    • Solder fun
      • Mmcx builds
      • Fixed my homemade bluetooth adapter
      • More LG HBS 770’s

The News: 

Security Update: 

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, March 22, 2020.

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 4276 mintCast 330 – Debbie Does Beta (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-330-debbie-does-beta-mp3/ Wed, 11 Mar 2020 04:57:48 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4272 Then, our news we have plenty of Linux Mint and LMDE news, Raspberry Pi fixes its USB, apt upgrades, and more.
In security, we find out if AMD’s flaws are as bad as Intel’s.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo tries out LMDE, Bo keeps things to himself, Tony Hughes returns with ALT Linux adventures, Moss boogies from Budgie, and Joe tries out scrcpy (screen copy).

Then, our news we have plenty of Linux Mint and LMDE news, Raspberry Pi fixes its USB, apt upgrades, and more.

In security, we find out if AMD’s flaws are as bad as Intel’s.

Bi-weekly Wanderings:

  • Leo
    • Gave LMDE 4 Beta a whirl. Seems everything is the way you’d expect, new logos and Cinnamon updates that we’ve touched on in previous episodes.
    • The deal breaker for me on the Desktop will be the Kernel 4.19.
    • The laptop would work fine on this version, but it hasn’t budged from LM 19 save for the incremental upgrades to .1, .2 and .3.
    • Not having PPAs directly available is also a sore spot. Some things just aren’t available via AppImage, Snap or Flatpak, and PPAs can fill the gap.
  • Tony H
    • Hi great to be back so since the last show I’ve been up to loads of non Linux geeky stuff. I have been baking sourdough bread several times a week and it really is worth making your own bread. The quality is so good and the flavour is amazing. 
    • Obviously I have been playing around with my model cars a little but a short break away from home down in the south of England to visit friends and some relatives and then a 4 day trip to Birmingham, got in the way a little.
    • The same with Linux, I installed ALT Linux for the upcoming Distrohoppers’ Digest recording, this delayed as I had an emergency root canal filling the day before we were due to record last week but hopefully we are good for next Thursday. But with Vacations and other things that have been going on I have not got around to play with it for as long as I would have liked, sometimes life just gets in the way of things, sometimes I seem to be juggling too many balls in the air at once, and unlike my fellow hosts I can’t even blame work or school for that.       
  • Moss
    • Sorry to miss the last show, things got out of control around here. Still are, a bit. But in the interim, I’ve managed to install OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 on both machines, and have run into a snag on installing Solus on my Galago Pro 2. I topped off my current lineup with Zorin OS Ultimate 15.2, although I’m not satisfied with that choice. It does have a nice Grub menu though. I also tried Ubuntu Budgie 20.04 in advance, with no grub menu customization at all and a few papercuts.
    • As Tony stated, we will record Episode 011 of Distrohoppers’ Digest on Thursday, March 12th. Our schedule is slipping a bit more from our intended monthly podcast, but we’re only human. Our stats are still hovering at just over 400 downloads per episode, although Episode 008 is the most recent to top 400 downloads. This month we will be covering ALT Linux and Ubuntu Budgie.
    • Speaking of the Ubuntu Budgie and my presence on their team, I ran into the same problem as I do all too often here, not enough time and too stressed. I resigned this morning from the project, but said I was still interested in doing the voiceover videos.
    • Listener Dale Miracle upped my game again, buying me a WAVLINK ST-336A USB 3 dual hard drive thingie with extra USB and SD card slots (what Leo and I call a “toaster”) and an Anker 9-port USB 3 hub. So now everything on my machine except for my mini keyboards and microphone are USB3.  I have replaced my underutilized 2 Tb spinning disk with 2 256 Gb SSDs, which run cooler and more quietly. I’ll keep the 2 Tb around as my 2nd Backup.
    • Suzanne and I just finished Fool Moon, the second Dresden FIles book, and have launched into book 3, Grave Peril. It seems to be jumping around a bit in the first few chapters.
    • I continue working in the wrong job with no good end in sight and alternatives looking more meager.
  • Joe
    • Reading
      • Stormlight archive book 3
      • Artemis by Andy Wier 
      • Junkyard druid.
        • Relistened to the whole series since the books are short.
        • Was able to get the 2 newest books as well
      • Takeshi Kovacs novels because Altered Carbon season 2
      • Neil Gaiman American Gods
    • Put my 3d printer back together.  Have a spare board now.
      • Still having problems with prints
      • Will get more into it at a later date.  
      • For just say it ain’t working
    • Netflix Altered Carbon season 2
      • It was good.
      • Very different from book 2 however.  I really enjoyed first season because of how well it went along with the book
      • This was different though and i understand why.  It would have been very difficult to recreate all the things that happened in the book.  But second season while it did have a lot of things that were in none of the books seemed to have more aspects of the things that were included in the third book than it did the second
      • Still you should watch it if you have the chance.  Also read the books because awesome
      • Very adult themed
    • Installed Fedora Workstation on the 7140
      • Looks good and works well with some small exceptions
      • Have not used gnome in a long time and I am really impressed with how far it has come along and how smooth it runs
      • Only problem I am having so far is that the touchpad works at the login screen but becomes unresponsive after login
        • Probably an issue with the drivers trying to load twice
        • But I was able to correct the issue with sleep 45; sudo modprobe -r hid_multitouch; sudo modprobe hid_multitouch;
        • Which i added to the crontab @reboot
        • I also want to set up something similar whenever the keyboard is docked.  This may clear some of the issues that the tablet has with the docking procedure
      • Had to go into alsamixer and disable the hdmi audio in order to get the built in speakers to work
      • Well it was working.  Got a couple of pops after a couple of reboots even though the audio was muted and then now it cant find the internal audio card.  So I think I may have blown the hardware.  
      • Bluetooth audio works
    • Testing out scrcpy which allows me to mirror and interact with my android phone on my linux machine
      • It is free
      • Does not require root
      • Works using adb so you have to turn on debugging
      • 2 thumbs up for me
      • Full screen looks good and i have not noticed any lag
      • Actually using it a lot
    • Solder fun
      • Mmcx builds
      • Fixed my homemade bluetooth adapter
      • More LG HBS 770’s

The News: 

Security Update: 

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, March 22, 2020.

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 4272 mintCast 326.5 – Biscuits and a Thinkpad https://mintcast.org/mintcast-326-5-biscuits-and-a-thinkpad/ Wed, 22 Jan 2020 06:19:33 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4141 And finally, the feedback
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we talk all things ‘Lenovo Thinkpads’

And finally, the feedback

Linux Innards:

  • Maybe the first thing to say is how many Lenovo laptops we have or have used in the past ** indicates still owned.
  • We missed two predictions from Discord!
    • Katya predicts that there will be an official red hat version of fedora IoT
    • Cryptodan predicts that Microsoft will acquire Ubuntu
  • Tony H – x61s, x200, x200 Tablet**, x201**, X230i** 
    • None of the ones I still have are in daily use so the x61 has just gone to go to Egypt with a package of other stuff as a donation to a school there.
    • Back when I first started to use Lenovo laptops about 8-9 years ago the thing that I appreciated on the X200 series was the portability (12” screen) battery life and robustness, these laptops were built to be used on the road and were very well built.
    • If it weren’t for aging eyes, I would probably still use my X230i as it is a great little laptop but these days I use my Dell E7440 as a compromise of portability and screen size. The bigger 400 series are just that little too heavy for toting a couple in a laptop bag which I can do with the E7440.
  • Tony W –  
    • Had an old IBM thinkpad, 2004 or 2005 machine but do not have anymore and don’t know the model (before my Linux days)
    • Using a Lenovo H50 desktop in the house, budget desktop from 2015
      • Was given to me by my grandfather because he couldn’t stomach Windows 10
      • 4th gen i3 processor
      • Upgraded RAM from 4GB to 8GB
      • Added low profile 2GB nvidia card to it
      • Works fine for most purposes and will play low resource steam games
    • Current work laptop Thinkpad T480
      • Processor i7, 8GB RAM
      • Internal + External Battery
          • Internal battery is used until depleted, then external is used
          • Can hot swap batteries
          • Seems to be some debate online about lack of option to set external battery to drain first
        • Extremely solid feel
        • Trackpad is great in my experience (though not a lot to compare to)
        • Perfect size
        • Appreciate the built in webcam cover
      • Only very minor CONS 
        • The thing is a finger smudge magnet (don’t really care)
        • HDMI and USB C display out cannot be used simultaneously – one or the other
      • WHY are the Thinkpad docks so expensive?
        • They are nearly $200
        • Many aftermarket hubs are a lot cheaper
          • Aftermarket hub w/ actual working dual displays seem to run about $80
          • My workaround dock situation: USB C hub with one display + one USB C to HDMI adapter.  Cost ~$40
  • Popey – 
    • Main machine: ThinkPad T450 – Ubuntu 19.10 (i7, upgraded to 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 250 GB m.2 SSD, replaced screen with matte display.). Docking station, 2 external displays. Multiple external batteries.
    • Previous main machine: ThinkPad X220 (i7, 16GB, swappable hard disks) – mainly used for testing various distros
    • X61s Command line only system – C2D 1.6GHz / 6GB RAM / 250GB SSD
    • T43 – Pentium M 2.0GHz / 1.5GiB RAM / 40GB disk
    • R50e – Celeron 1.4GHz / 1.2GiB RAM / 40GB disk 
    • 380XD – Pentium / 32MiB RAM / 4GB disk / Windows 98
  • Joe
    • Thinkpad x120e
      • One of the few early netbooks with a 64 bit processor
      • Not quite fast enough for daily use
      • Works phenomenally as a batocera machine playing old games including ps1’s armored core masters of arena. 
  • Leo
    • Thinkpad T450s
      • My daily driver. Bought it second-hand about 2 years ago now. My first and only Thinkpad. I’ve used others before, and quite liked them. Best laptop choice I’ve ever made.
      • i5 5300u, 20GB RAM, 512GB SATA SSD with Mint, 256GB m.2/SATA with Windows. Considering putting something else on it since I haven’t booted into Windows on this laptop for over a month.

Vibrations from the Ether:

  • Erik Lietz

I didn’t realize I would be the only listener to submit my 2020 predictions. Thanks for reading them! I accept the challenge to beat the rest of you on your predictions! I will have to figure out some audio equipment if I’m invited onto the show.

Since you asked some questions about my predictions, I will offer some clarifications.

  1. Purism will go out of business – the Librem 5 phone endeavor will put it under
    (Purism’s reach into so many products will be their undoing and even with some products doing well, this will be too much for their business to sustain)

  2. The PinePhone will be an amazing product and success story for Pine64
    (I am waiting for the second offering after the Brave Heart edition. The PinePhone product development will set a ‘gold’ standard how to correctly launch new product)

  3. An major industry specific software company (Adobe, Autodesk (for AutoCAD), or similar) will offer a Linux version for a flagship software product
    (Adobe, Autodesk, or another specific flagship program dedicated for a very specific task. Running natively, no Wine, no web apps – AutoCAD can already run as a web app)

  4. Microsoft will offer Office 365 on Linux
    (MS Word, Excel, Power Point at a minimum will be running natively on Linux, no Wine, no web apps)

  5. Linux preinstalled from a major hardware supplier will be available in big box stores available off of the shelf
    (a large hardware vendor (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc)

As Moss said, it very well could have been Martin Wimpress or Alan Poppe who first stated this. I give credit where credit is due, but I can’t find this quote again on my other podcasts to confirm who said it.

By the way – our Linux conversion at the office is now complete! We have all of our workstations (CAD, engineering, and office support staff) running on Mint 19.1 with the 5.0 kernel. We have a server running Ubuntu Server 18.04. Hardly any issues at all, and the issues we do have is with network printing on copiers and accessing files on older Synology NAS boxes. Which, has forced us to do some much needed upgrades on both the copiers and network storage. One main benefit to switching to Linux has been enabling my wife and I as business owners to do all of the IT work ourselves, instead of outsourcing this work. Another benefit is that the setup and maintenance on the Linux machines is easily less than half the amount of time. Time = money! Linux has enabled us to take back control of our computing.

Thanks again for the great podcast!

  • G

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to say thanks for the great podcast. I have been listening since 2018. On episode 325, I would like to shout out a big THANK YOU!  to you all for being diplomatic about the recent Purism news and for reminding us of the differences between the Pine Phone and the Librem 5. Bravo! 

  • David

I applied the 19.3 latest updates which required a restart and now Mint hangs after I get the new LM boot screen, it never gets past this screen.  I’ve only been using Linux Desktop for about a year, so still learning and this is the first time I’ve had a single issue with Linux.

I do have TimeShift running Daily, Weekly, Monthly but I can’t even get to that point.

Any suggestions on how I can get to ??? So I can do a restore from TimeShift?

Thanks.

Check This Out:

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> full 1:01:44 4141 mintCast 326.5 – Biscuits and a Thinkpad (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-326-5-biscuits-and-a-thinkpad-mp3/ Wed, 22 Jan 2020 06:18:47 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4139 And finally, the feedback
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we talk all things ‘Lenovo Thinkpads’

And finally, the feedback

Linux Innards:

  • Maybe the first thing to say is how many Lenovo laptops we have or have used in the past ** indicates still owned.
  • We missed two predictions from Discord!
    • Katya predicts that there will be an official red hat version of fedora IoT
    • Cryptodan predicts that Microsoft will acquire Ubuntu
  • Tony H – x61s, x200, x200 Tablet**, x201**, X230i** 
    • None of the ones I still have are in daily use so the x61 has just gone to go to Egypt with a package of other stuff as a donation to a school there.
    • Back when I first started to use Lenovo laptops about 8-9 years ago the thing that I appreciated on the X200 series was the portability (12” screen) battery life and robustness, these laptops were built to be used on the road and were very well built.
    • If it weren’t for aging eyes, I would probably still use my X230i as it is a great little laptop but these days I use my Dell E7440 as a compromise of portability and screen size. The bigger 400 series are just that little too heavy for toting a couple in a laptop bag which I can do with the E7440.
  • Tony W –  
    • Had an old IBM thinkpad, 2004 or 2005 machine but do not have anymore and don’t know the model (before my Linux days)
    • Using a Lenovo H50 desktop in the house, budget desktop from 2015
      • Was given to me by my grandfather because he couldn’t stomach Windows 10
      • 4th gen i3 processor
      • Upgraded RAM from 4GB to 8GB
      • Added low profile 2GB nvidia card to it
      • Works fine for most purposes and will play low resource steam games
    • Current work laptop Thinkpad T480
      • Processor i7, 8GB RAM
      • Internal + External Battery
          • Internal battery is used until depleted, then external is used
          • Can hot swap batteries
          • Seems to be some debate online about lack of option to set external battery to drain first
        • Extremely solid feel
        • Trackpad is great in my experience (though not a lot to compare to)
        • Perfect size
        • Appreciate the built in webcam cover
      • Only very minor CONS 
        • The thing is a finger smudge magnet (don’t really care)
        • HDMI and USB C display out cannot be used simultaneously – one or the other
      • WHY are the Thinkpad docks so expensive?
        • They are nearly $200
        • Many aftermarket hubs are a lot cheaper
          • Aftermarket hub w/ actual working dual displays seem to run about $80
          • My workaround dock situation: USB C hub with one display + one USB C to HDMI adapter.  Cost ~$40
  • Popey – 
    • Main machine: ThinkPad T450 – Ubuntu 19.10 (i7, upgraded to 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 250 GB m.2 SSD, replaced screen with matte display.). Docking station, 2 external displays. Multiple external batteries.
    • Previous main machine: ThinkPad X220 (i7, 16GB, swappable hard disks) – mainly used for testing various distros
    • X61s Command line only system – C2D 1.6GHz / 6GB RAM / 250GB SSD
    • T43 – Pentium M 2.0GHz / 1.5GiB RAM / 40GB disk
    • R50e – Celeron 1.4GHz / 1.2GiB RAM / 40GB disk 
    • 380XD – Pentium / 32MiB RAM / 4GB disk / Windows 98
  • Joe
    • Thinkpad x120e
      • One of the few early netbooks with a 64 bit processor
      • Not quite fast enough for daily use
      • Works phenomenally as a batocera machine playing old games including ps1’s armored core masters of arena. 
  • Leo
    • Thinkpad T450s
      • My daily driver. Bought it second-hand about 2 years ago now. My first and only Thinkpad. I’ve used others before, and quite liked them. Best laptop choice I’ve ever made.
      • i5 5300u, 20GB RAM, 512GB SATA SSD with Mint, 256GB m.2/SATA with Windows. Considering putting something else on it since I haven’t booted into Windows on this laptop for over a month.

Vibrations from the Ether:

  • Erik Lietz

I didn’t realize I would be the only listener to submit my 2020 predictions. Thanks for reading them! I accept the challenge to beat the rest of you on your predictions! I will have to figure out some audio equipment if I’m invited onto the show.

Since you asked some questions about my predictions, I will offer some clarifications.

  1. Purism will go out of business – the Librem 5 phone endeavor will put it under
    (Purism’s reach into so many products will be their undoing and even with some products doing well, this will be too much for their business to sustain)

  2. The PinePhone will be an amazing product and success story for Pine64
    (I am waiting for the second offering after the Brave Heart edition. The PinePhone product development will set a ‘gold’ standard how to correctly launch new product)

  3. An major industry specific software company (Adobe, Autodesk (for AutoCAD), or similar) will offer a Linux version for a flagship software product
    (Adobe, Autodesk, or another specific flagship program dedicated for a very specific task. Running natively, no Wine, no web apps – AutoCAD can already run as a web app)

  4. Microsoft will offer Office 365 on Linux
    (MS Word, Excel, Power Point at a minimum will be running natively on Linux, no Wine, no web apps)

  5. Linux preinstalled from a major hardware supplier will be available in big box stores available off of the shelf
    (a large hardware vendor (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc)

As Moss said, it very well could have been Martin Wimpress or Alan Poppe who first stated this. I give credit where credit is due, but I can’t find this quote again on my other podcasts to confirm who said it.

By the way – our Linux conversion at the office is now complete! We have all of our workstations (CAD, engineering, and office support staff) running on Mint 19.1 with the 5.0 kernel. We have a server running Ubuntu Server 18.04. Hardly any issues at all, and the issues we do have is with network printing on copiers and accessing files on older Synology NAS boxes. Which, has forced us to do some much needed upgrades on both the copiers and network storage. One main benefit to switching to Linux has been enabling my wife and I as business owners to do all of the IT work ourselves, instead of outsourcing this work. Another benefit is that the setup and maintenance on the Linux machines is easily less than half the amount of time. Time = money! Linux has enabled us to take back control of our computing.

Thanks again for the great podcast!

  • G

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to say thanks for the great podcast. I have been listening since 2018. On episode 325, I would like to shout out a big THANK YOU!  to you all for being diplomatic about the recent Purism news and for reminding us of the differences between the Pine Phone and the Librem 5. Bravo! 

  • David

I applied the 19.3 latest updates which required a restart and now Mint hangs after I get the new LM boot screen, it never gets past this screen.  I’ve only been using Linux Desktop for about a year, so still learning and this is the first time I’ve had a single issue with Linux.

I do have TimeShift running Daily, Weekly, Monthly but I can’t even get to that point.

Any suggestions on how I can get to ??? So I can do a restore from TimeShift?

Thanks.

Check This Out:

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> full 1:01:44 4139 mintCast 321.5 – Wololo https://mintcast.org/mintcast-321-5-wololo/ Wed, 13 Nov 2019 06:55:39 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4008 And finally, our community feedback.
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we decide when it’s the right time to suggest switching to Linux.

And finally, our community feedback.

LINUX INNARDS:

  • Intro
  • When NOT to recommend
    • Dependence on proprietary software
      • Audio/video production, but depends on the need. Some FOSS applications are very good at the basics
    • Too resistant to change
    • Not receptive to idea of free software being quality – assume free = low quality and not professional or dependable
    • When they have unsupported hardware
  • When to recommend
    • Mostly just uses their computer for Internet and email
    • Already uses some open source software, Open/LibreOffice, Firefox, VLC, GIMP/Glimpse etc.
    • Have unsupported Win version (Vista, etc) on old hardware
    • Interested in new stuff
    • Wants to learn to program
  • Put Linux on in a dual boot
    • “Just in case” second OS for someone who will primarily use Windows/Mac
      • Grub Customizer to move Linux to 2nd boot option in this scenario
    • Linux first, retain Windows/Mac “just in case”
  • Distro to use
    • Mint, obviously
    • Fedora if they want to get into computer administration or IT
    • MX for older machines or dislike of systemd {which other light 32-bit distros?}
    • Deepin or Pearl Desktop 8 for super pretty desktops (both of these may be contraindicated for political reasons)
    • Don’t be afraid to recommend buying used hardware when the user really needs it. T430s and X220s are cheap and will be good for another 5+ years. Any intel first gen i3/5 or AMD equivalent (6), is more than adequate for low resource case usage.
    • Anything else, for different use cases?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Henrik Hemerin

https://www.hemrin.com/business-blog/201-linux-mint-just-works-but-not-this-time .

 

 

  • George From Tulsa

Cinnamon Spices: https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/

  • John

www.apneaboard.com

  • Peter Jones
  • Brad Alexander

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=basil+sands&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

  • Bill Dietrich

https://www.billdietrich.me/MovingToLinux.html?expandall=1#LinuxIssues

  • Lucille Piche <pournew@gmail.com>

CHECK THIS OUT!

  • Moss – new find, FossPost – they also have a Telegram (announcements only) called OpenPigeon

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Next Show: Nov 17, 2019 – 2PM central time

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!>
]]> full 1:16:12 4008 mintCast 321.5 – Wololo (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-321-5-wololo-mp3/ Wed, 13 Nov 2019 06:55:12 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4006 And finally, our community feedback.
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we decide when it’s the right time to suggest switching to Linux.

And finally, our community feedback.

LINUX INNARDS: 

  • Intro
  • When NOT to recommend
    • Dependence on proprietary software
      • Audio/video production, but depends on the need.  Some FOSS applications are very good at the basics
    • Too resistant to change
    • Not receptive to idea of free software being quality – assume free = low quality and not professional or dependable
    • When they have unsupported hardware
  • When to recommend
    • Mostly just uses their computer for Internet and email
    • Already uses some open source software, Open/LibreOffice, Firefox, VLC, GIMP/Glimpse etc.
    • Have unsupported Win version (Vista, etc) on old hardware
    • Interested in new stuff
    • Wants to learn to program
  • Put Linux on in a dual boot
    • “Just in case” second OS for someone who will primarily use Windows/Mac
      • Grub Customizer to move Linux to 2nd boot option in this scenario
    • Linux first, retain Windows/Mac “just in case”
  • Distro to use
    • Mint, obviously
    • Fedora if they want to get into computer administration or IT
    • MX for older machines or dislike of systemd {which other light 32-bit distros?}
    • Deepin or Pearl Desktop 8 for super pretty desktops (both of these may be contraindicated for political reasons)
    • Don’t be afraid to recommend buying used hardware when the user really needs it. T430s and X220s are cheap and will be good for another 5+ years. Any intel first gen i3/5 or AMD equivalent (6), is more than adequate for low resource case usage.
    • Anything else, for different use cases?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Henrik Hemerin

https://www.hemrin.com/business-blog/201-linux-mint-just-works-but-not-this-time .

 

 

  • George From Tulsa

Cinnamon Spices: https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/

  • John

www.apneaboard.com

  • Peter Jones
  • Brad Alexander

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=basil+sands&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

  • Bill Dietrich

https://www.billdietrich.me/MovingToLinux.html?expandall=1#LinuxIssues

  • Lucille Piche <pournew@gmail.com>

CHECK THIS OUT! 

  • Moss – new find, FossPost – they also have a Telegram (announcements only) called OpenPigeon

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Next Show: Nov 17, 2019 – 2PM central time

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!>
]]> full 1:16:12 4006 mintCast 321 – Celluloid Service https://mintcast.org/mintcast-321-celluloid-service/ Wed, 06 Nov 2019 06:24:17 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4001 Then, our news Firefox, MX, Tails and Fedora all have new releases, and we cover the Linux Mint Monthly News. 
In the security section, we talk two bugs, one with Ubuntu and one on Firefox.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo finally gets upgraded to kernel 5.3, Tony Hughes tries out Ubuntu 19.10, Moss fights with Ubuntu Mate 19.10, Joe picks up an HP tablet to fix, and Tony Watts has a new guitar.

Then, our news Firefox, MX, Tails and Fedora all have new releases, and we cover the Linux Mint Monthly News. 

In the security section, we talk two bugs, one with Ubuntu and one on Firefox.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • Testing out kernel 5.3 on my desktop and laptop. Been on it about 5 days now.
      • It may have cleared up the freezing issue I was seeing that I think was caused by power states on my CPU. Time will tell here. It was fairly random and could take days to show up.
      • On my laptop, I haven’t seen a huge change, but seems stable.
  • Tony H
    •  Attending 2 family funerals which was the reason for my absence on the last episode, sadly I’m at that time when I see family at more funerals than weddings.
    • Buying and ‘playing’ with old diecast models, I’ve developed a liking for watching youtube videos of people restoring them. One of the Guys I watch is Marty from Australia who does Marty’s Matchbox Makeovers  I sent him a couple of cars to have a go at a while back.
    • Recorded the latest Distrohoppers Digest, and have now installed Ubuntu 19.10 Gnome on the test laptop for next months show. (We are recording the first week in December) 
  • Moss
    • I just added Bodhi to the Galago Pro 2, bringing it to 5 distros. I think I’ll leave it at 5, and I have been looking up what I did to fix the little paper cuts I had when installing Bodhi on the T430. I also saw a nice review of Bodhi by Jason M in the new issue of Full Circle Magazine.
    • I reported a bug in Ubuntu MATE 19.10. I literally had to get Alan Pope to get me to the right page to file it. (And doesn’t that say a lot of good things about the Linux community!) My desktop completely loaded sometimes, but most times it forgot to load the taskbar. And one day it loaded correctly, but after a while it went into Suspend mode, and when I entered my password to log back in, it opened without the taskbar. It’s not a lot of fun opening a terminal via right-clicking the desktop and running the program from terminal.
    • We recorded Episode 7 of Distrohoppers’ Digest on October 30th. We’re getting pretty good download numbers. Episode 4 has exceeded 450 downloads, two others have exceeded 350, and only Episode 2 has not yet reached 300, still sitting at 291. Tony Hughes got back from his trip to Glasgow. We reviewed OpenMandriva Lx 4 and MX Linux 19 (beta2 and final release). Go and have a listen, you’ll enjoy it.
    • Also, my wife and I both have been having issues where PIA locks us out of a website we’re trying to load, and we have to change nodes. This has been going on for all of the 2 months we’ve had the service. We have decided to go back to Mullvad, which is still a bit cheaper on month-to-month billing, when the current month runs out sometime today as we record this.
    • Now that Distrohoppers’ Digest is out of the way for this month, I attempted to install Manjaro on the Kudu 3, and ran into the same problem as before; it will download updates or programs I want to install, and stop. I have to log out and back in and run the installer again, and installs what got downloaded. So I have dumped Manjaro for this month and installed Zorin OS Core 15 on the Kudu 3. I’ll keep the results to myself (unless you’re in our chat or Terminal), but it should do for next month.
    • Which means I have an IdeaPad to get ready for sale. I haven’t done much more than download Windoze 10 and the installer program, haven’t even tried burning the iso yet, but it’s on the list.
    • We have a new kitten. We rescued it from being feral just outside our trailer. Then the trouble started. He climbed up inside our dashboard, unbeknownst to us, and we thought he had gotten out of the car without our knowledge. So after a lot of emotions being displayed, I got back into the car and started driving back to the last place we went to, and heard him mewing inside the dash. Our two nearest neighbors came to help me tear the dashboard apart. No luck. He spent the night in the car, with an open can of cat food. When I got up in the morning, he was still in the dash. I drove to the fire department, but nobody was there when I got there, including police or anyone else. I got back in the car… and there he was on the floor, looking at me like, “What is all the fuss about?” So he’s home now. Tiny little thing. Black, with white paws, blue eyes and a white bib. We have named him Gremlin. He is as cute as can be and instantly bonded to us.
  • Joe
    • Fixed my downstairs toilet.  Replaced some of the internals and readjusted the float so it doesn’t run all the time.
      • It is a bit more broken so I will be replacing more parts.  Or the whole damn thing
    • Picked up an HP Pavilion X360 with an i3 7th gen for 50 bucks on FB.  
      • https://www.amazon.com/HP-Pavilion-touchscreen-i3-7100U-Bluetooth/dp/B078VP7GX2
      • Not in very good condition because it has been dropped.  
      • It had a bad hard drive but I was able to replace that.  
      • Also has a bad keyboard where only some of the keys work.
        • Tried readjusting the ribbon cable but no luck
        • A replacement costs about 20 bucks.  Ordered but it will take some time to arrive
      • The digitizer is also broken so no touch screen but the monitor itself is still useable
        • Replacement digitizer cost $130-150
        • Have watched the videos on youtube on how to replace
        • Looks difficult
        • For people that dont know the digitizer is the glass that sits in front of the monitor used for touch screens.  Including phones and tablets
    • Going through the Larry Correia collection again.
    • Charley Davidson series by Darynda Jones
      • Not my favorite series but it was ok
      • Seems very cookie cutter meaning not much originality of its own.  Mostly it feels like the author just took her favorite parts of other book series and put them together.  But it hasn’t stopped me from reading it.
    • More Python classes with friends. went over boolean, if statements and while loops today.  Probably gonna go over for loops next time.
    • Got the MMCX connectors but I am not sure about the tension relief on them so I have not done anything with them yet.  May order a couple more cable versions of the connectors and not do the retractables just yet, 
    • Attempted to purchase a set of 14 LG headsets of different types on auction.  Prices looked good and thought I was going to get a deal until the last day and the bidding went higher than I wanted.
    • Still a fan of how easy the Turtle Beach Earforce Z2’s and X50’s are to work on.  Also the Z2’s are great for podcasting but terrible for music listening without a very good equalizer.  The X50’s sound much more crisp but are terrible for long-term wear and distort at higher volumes. Thinking about trying out a headphone amp on the Z2’s and see if that helps.  Also looking to see some of the mods that are floating around that might help with the sound quality. I am open to suggestions
    • I guess that came about because I did bust out the Sennheiser Urbanite XL’s, which, while comfortable and get reasonably good sound, have very small earcups and very poorly placed touch controls.
  • Tony W
    • The Tascam Model 24 acquired!
      • Will not Multi function
        • Audio interface to DAW, 22 simultaneous channels
        • Can also record directly to SD card
        • Can use as live sound board
      • Using with Reaper recording software
        • Proprietary but does work on Linux
      • New guitar – PRS SE Angelus A40E

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • Ubuntu 19.10 bug Shares Your Media Folders Without Permission
    • Users of non-Gnome versions of Ubuntu 19.10 are getting hit with automatically shared home folder bits (Photos, Videos, Music). On those flavors, the rygel media server is starting automatically.
    • The quick band-aid is running ‘sudo apt remove rygel’
  • Firefox fixes security bug in Master Password
    • This is an issue in Firefox 68.0.2 that allows an attacker to see your passwords without using the master password. This should already be fixed in your current version of Firefox as long as you’ve updated, but may affect you on the ESR. However, the fix is still the same. Update!
  • And here

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!>
]]> full 54:11 4001 mintCast 321 – Celluloid Service (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-321-celluloid-service-mp3/ Wed, 06 Nov 2019 06:23:44 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3999 Then, our news Firefox, MX, Tails and Fedora all have new releases, and we cover the Linux Mint Monthly News. 
In the security section, we talk two bugs, one with Ubuntu and one on Firefox.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo finally gets upgraded to kernel 5.3, Tony Hughes tries out Ubuntu 19.10, Moss fights with Ubuntu Mate 19.10, Joe picks up an HP tablet to fix, and Tony Watts has a new guitar.

Then, our news Firefox, MX, Tails and Fedora all have new releases, and we cover the Linux Mint Monthly News. 

In the security section, we talk two bugs, one with Ubuntu and one on Firefox.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • Testing out kernel 5.3 on my desktop and laptop. Been on it about 5 days now.
      • It may have cleared up the freezing issue I was seeing that I think was caused by power states on my CPU. Time will tell here. It was fairly random and could take days to show up.
      • On my laptop, I haven’t seen a huge change, but seems stable.
  • Tony H
    •  Attending 2 family funerals which was the reason for my absence on the last episode, sadly I’m at that time when I see family at more funerals than weddings.
    • Buying and ‘playing’ with old diecast models, I’ve developed a liking for watching youtube videos of people restoring them. One of the Guys I watch is Marty from Australia who does Marty’s Matchbox Makeovers  I sent him a couple of cars to have a go at a while back.
    • Recorded the latest Distrohoppers Digest, and have now installed Ubuntu 19.10 Gnome on the test laptop for next months show. (We are recording the first week in December) 
  • Moss
    • I just added Bodhi to the Galago Pro 2, bringing it to 5 distros. I think I’ll leave it at 5, and I have been looking up what I did to fix the little paper cuts I had when installing Bodhi on the T430. I also saw a nice review of Bodhi by Jason M in the new issue of Full Circle Magazine.
    • I reported a bug in Ubuntu MATE 19.10. I literally had to get Alan Pope to get me to the right page to file it. (And doesn’t that say a lot of good things about the Linux community!) My desktop completely loaded sometimes, but most times it forgot to load the taskbar. And one day it loaded correctly, but after a while it went into Suspend mode, and when I entered my password to log back in, it opened without the taskbar. It’s not a lot of fun opening a terminal via right-clicking the desktop and running the program from terminal.
    • We recorded Episode 7 of Distrohoppers’ Digest on October 30th. We’re getting pretty good download numbers. Episode 4 has exceeded 450 downloads, two others have exceeded 350, and only Episode 2 has not yet reached 300, still sitting at 291. Tony Hughes got back from his trip to Glasgow. We reviewed OpenMandriva Lx 4 and MX Linux 19 (beta2 and final release). Go and have a listen, you’ll enjoy it.
    • Also, my wife and I both have been having issues where PIA locks us out of a website we’re trying to load, and we have to change nodes. This has been going on for all of the 2 months we’ve had the service. We have decided to go back to Mullvad, which is still a bit cheaper on month-to-month billing, when the current month runs out sometime today as we record this.
    • Now that Distrohoppers’ Digest is out of the way for this month, I attempted to install Manjaro on the Kudu 3, and ran into the same problem as before; it will download updates or programs I want to install, and stop. I have to log out and back in and run the installer again, and installs what got downloaded. So I have dumped Manjaro for this month and installed Zorin OS Core 15 on the Kudu 3. I’ll keep the results to myself (unless you’re in our chat or Terminal), but it should do for next month.
    • Which means I have an IdeaPad to get ready for sale. I haven’t done much more than download Windoze 10 and the installer program, haven’t even tried burning the iso yet, but it’s on the list.
    • We have a new kitten. We rescued it from being feral just outside our trailer. Then the trouble started. He climbed up inside our dashboard, unbeknownst to us, and we thought he had gotten out of the car without our knowledge. So after a lot of emotions being displayed, I got back into the car and started driving back to the last place we went to, and heard him mewing inside the dash. Our two nearest neighbors came to help me tear the dashboard apart. No luck. He spent the night in the car, with an open can of cat food. When I got up in the morning, he was still in the dash. I drove to the fire department, but nobody was there when I got there, including police or anyone else. I got back in the car… and there he was on the floor, looking at me like, “What is all the fuss about?” So he’s home now. Tiny little thing. Black, with white paws, blue eyes and a white bib. We have named him Gremlin. He is as cute as can be and instantly bonded to us.
  • Joe
    • Fixed my downstairs toilet.  Replaced some of the internals and readjusted the float so it doesn’t run all the time.
      • It is a bit more broken so I will be replacing more parts.  Or the whole damn thing
    • Picked up an HP Pavilion X360 with an i3 7th gen for 50 bucks on FB.  
      • https://www.amazon.com/HP-Pavilion-touchscreen-i3-7100U-Bluetooth/dp/B078VP7GX2
      • Not in very good condition because it has been dropped.  
      • It had a bad hard drive but I was able to replace that.  
      • Also has a bad keyboard where only some of the keys work.
        • Tried readjusting the ribbon cable but no luck
        • A replacement costs about 20 bucks.  Ordered but it will take some time to arrive
      • The digitizer is also broken so no touch screen but the monitor itself is still useable
        • Replacement digitizer cost $130-150
        • Have watched the videos on youtube on how to replace
        • Looks difficult
        • For people that dont know the digitizer is the glass that sits in front of the monitor used for touch screens.  Including phones and tablets
    • Going through the Larry Correia collection again.
    • Charley Davidson series by Darynda Jones
      • Not my favorite series but it was ok
      • Seems very cookie cutter meaning not much originality of its own.  Mostly it feels like the author just took her favorite parts of other book series and put them together.  But it hasn’t stopped me from reading it.
    • More Python classes with friends. went over boolean, if statements and while loops today.  Probably gonna go over for loops next time.
    • Got the MMCX connectors but I am not sure about the tension relief on them so I have not done anything with them yet.  May order a couple more cable versions of the connectors and not do the retractables just yet, 
    • Attempted to purchase a set of 14 LG headsets of different types on auction.  Prices looked good and thought I was going to get a deal until the last day and the bidding went higher than I wanted.
    • Still a fan of how easy the Turtle Beach Earforce Z2’s and X50’s are to work on.  Also the Z2’s are great for podcasting but terrible for music listening without a very good equalizer.  The X50’s sound much more crisp but are terrible for long-term wear and distort at higher volumes. Thinking about trying out a headphone amp on the Z2’s and see if that helps.  Also looking to see some of the mods that are floating around that might help with the sound quality. I am open to suggestions
    • I guess that came about because I did bust out the Sennheiser Urbanite XL’s, which, while comfortable and get reasonably good sound, have very small earcups and very poorly placed touch controls.
  • Tony W
    • The Tascam Model 24 acquired!
      • Will not Multi function
        • Audio interface to DAW, 22 simultaneous channels
        • Can also record directly to SD card
        • Can use as live sound board
      • Using with Reaper recording software
        • Proprietary but does work on Linux
      • New guitar – PRS SE Angelus A40E

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • Ubuntu 19.10 bug Shares Your Media Folders Without Permission
    • Users of non-Gnome versions of Ubuntu 19.10 are getting hit with automatically shared home folder bits (Photos, Videos, Music). On those flavors, the rygel media server is starting automatically.
    • The quick band-aid is running ‘sudo apt remove rygel’
  • Firefox fixes security bug in Master Password
    • This is an issue in Firefox 68.0.2 that allows an attacker to see your passwords without using the master password. This should already be fixed in your current version of Firefox as long as you’ve updated, but may affect you on the ESR. However, the fix is still the same. Update!
  • And here

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!>
]]> full 55:48 3999 mintCast 226 – Fedora Twenty-Two https://mintcast.org/mintcast-226-fedora-twenty-two/ Fri, 19 Jun 2015 02:04:45 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2978 226]

Download

News:

Main Topic: Fedora 22 (Twenty-Two)

Websites:

Tip:

  • To removing a directory from your PATH,you just execute:

    export PATH=[current PATH without whatever you’re removing]

  • That would be for the current session, if you want to change permanently add it to any .bashrc, bash.bashrc, /etc/profile, .bash_profile, etc. — whatever fits your system and user needs.

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

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

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

]]> full 2978 mintCast 222 – Package Managers https://mintcast.org/mintcast-222-package-managers/ Thu, 23 Apr 2015 21:28:51 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2955 Download

News:

  • LMDE 2 “Betsy” MATE released! (MATE) (Cinnamon)
  • Jessie coming soon! (debian.org)
  • Linux Mint Needs a Huge, Modern Overhaul, More Artists and Web Developers are Needed (softpedia.com)
  • PrivateInternetAccess becomes Linux Mint’s main sponsor (linuxmint.com)
  • Why Nvidia graphics cards are the worst for open-source, but the best for Linux gaming (pcworld.com)
  • Ubuntu 15.04 Is Coming, to Upgrade or Not to Upgrade (softpedia.com)
  • Roommates hospitalized after stabbing one another during heated iPhone vs. Android debate (bgr.com)

Main Topic: Package Management

Website:

Tip:

  • Use Avahi to register your computers on your local network. The Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD daemon implements Apple’s Zeroconf architecture (also known as “Rendezvous” or “Bonjour”).

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

Hosts: Rob,Scott, Joe

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

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

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