Feren OS – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Wed, 14 Jun 2023 09:39:23 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Feren OS – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false episodic CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast Feren OS – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 414 – Salt and Battery https://mintcast.org/414-salt-and-battery/ Wed, 14 Jun 2023 04:00:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6222 First up in the news, Mint Monthly News, All-Snap Ubuntu Desktop Will Be Available Next Year, Red Hat Stops Packaging LibreOffice as RPM for RHEL & Fedora, Mozilla Thunderbird’s Next Big Update Is Now in Beta, Windows XP activation algorithm cracked - keygen now works on Linux

In security and privacy, we meet Blacksuit

Then in our Wanderings, Bill chases burning trucks, Moss is feeling the pressure, and Majid needs to stop spending money

In our Innards section, we discuss laptop battery life

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Download
]]> First up in the news, Mint Monthly News, All-Snap Ubuntu Desktop Will Be Available Next Year, Red Hat Stops Packaging LibreOffice as RPM for RHEL & Fedora, Mozilla Thunderbird’s Next Big Update Is Now in Beta, Windows XP activation algorithm cracked – keygen now works on Linux;

In security and privacy, we meet Blacksuit;

Then in our Wanderings, Bill chases burning trucks, Moss is feeling the pressure, and Majid needs to stop spending money

In our Innards section, we discuss laptop battery life;

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

The News

Mint Monthly News – May 2023

All-Snap Ubuntu Desktop Will Be Available Next Year

Red Hat Will Stop Packaging LibreOffice as RPM for RHEL, Fedora

Mozilla Thunderbird’s Next Big Update Is Now in Beta

Windows XP activation algorithm cracked – keygen now works on Linux

Security and Privacy

New Linux Ransomware “Blacksuit”, looks like “Royal”

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 other valuable 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!>
]]> 414 414 Salt and Battery full 1:36:01 6222 mintCast 349 – NAT Ain’t A Firewall (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-349-nat-aint-a-firewall-mp3/ Wed, 02 Dec 2020 05:19:55 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4794 Then in the news, OpenSUSE’s going public?, Pine64 feels the Plasma, and Linux gets Ray tracing.
In security, kill switches and a reminder that NAT ain’t a firewall.
Download
]]> Download

1:44 Wanderings
42:27 News
50:35 Security
59:43 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo has another helping of Pi, Moss gets spooked, Josh changes up the desktop, and Joe strips.

Then in the news, OpenSUSE’s going public?, Pine64 feels the Plasma, and Linux gets Ray tracing.

In security, kill switches and a reminder that NAT ain’t a firewall.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

Leo

  • Been playing with more Pi!
    • Dug up my old Pi 2, have some download automation running on it now. Made a VM of mine redundant. Considering converting it to a Gitea server to manage my notes.
    • Will relieve my i7 2630qm from Nextcloud duty. The Pi 4 is working beautifully. Now, what to do with it? Docker time?
    • Have some ideas for my old rickety Pi one. Use TMUX to ssh into multiple servers and run bpytop or some monitoring tool on a screen, 24/7. Basically, blinking lights. Raspbian Lite will likely do the job nicely.

Moss

  • I thought I had a problem with the FuzZ400…and before I determined what the problem was, I grabbed my now-repaired mini box and hooked it up. Just as I was tightening the screws on the case, I saw that my tablet, which had been plugged in for charging, was sitting on the keyboard. Problem solved, but too late to go back.
  • I had to reinstall everything on the Mini’s SSD except Mint and Manjaro, probably having to do with having been installed on a completely different computer (Xeon and Nvidia instead of i3 and Intel). 
  • I’ve added more partitions to my Kudu’s 1 Tb SSD. I now have 10 distro partitions, one of them unused. I installed Enso OS, and am probably going to review that for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest. I’m also trying 4M Linux on a USB stick, as it seems to be a Puppy-like version of Arch.
  • I had a lot of other issues, but I’ll save those for the next DHD, which should be out right about the time of the next mintCast.
  • Distrohoppers’ Digest now has 4 episodes with over 500 downloads – 1 of those over 600 –  and only 4 under 400. We’re averaging 463 downloads per episode. Episode 018 featured Dale Miracle live in studio for the first time. Dale covers distros NOT made for beginners, a welcome addition. The next episode is currently scheduled to be recorded on December 9.
  • I’ve been getting a few days’ work as a substitute teacher, but they keep closing the schools. Last week it was that they didn’t have enough healthy bus drivers, next week it’s that they don’t have enough teachers and subs. I got paychecks from Grainger Schools, All Women Housed, and finally from Census2020! I’m still way behind on lots of things, since it has been so long since I last had a paycheck.
  • I’m reading the Kevin Mitnick book. It did not convince me why I need that much security, and completely convinced me that I won’t be secure no matter how much time, effort, and money I spend. So why bother? I’m about to give up and give Google all my money.
  • We are working our way through Proven Guilty, in the Dresden Files series. Almost halfway through.

Josh

  • I have been trying out Plasma and really trying to give it a good shot. I tried openSUSE Tumbleweed first because it has a great plasma representation. It uses the newest plasma available because it’s a rolling release. I personally don’t like anything about default plasma, it just rubs me wrong. I quickly discovered that it just won’t work for me due to look & feel and settings issues. 
  • Next I tried Manjaro Plasma and that felt much better out of the gate. I could live with it as default but some small quarks just keep me at bay. Right clicking on both openSUSE and Manjaro resulted in a menu that I was unfamiliar with. You had to not only right click but then open a menu inside of the dialogue to get the open in terminal option. Also there is no open as root by default but as stated to me by Dale Miracle there is an add-on. The dolphin file browser also does not feel right to me for either of these first two distros I tried. Things get really out of hand when trying to compensate for HiDpi monitors. It’s so hard to get every aspect of the desktop to look right that I just gave up entirely and I tried for hours with both tweaking and resetting but nothing looked good. 
  • Finally I tried FerenOS and, by George, I think he’s done it. Next to Solus (which I will mention later) FerenOS has the best customized plasma desktop hands down. Everything looks proportionate, nothing seems out of place or not scaled right and he fixes the Dolphin issue by ripping it out and replacing it with good old Nemo! Theming is great and you can change everything, the dark or light theme, the accent color, and even the layout of plasma right from the welcome screen. Now that all being said the HiDpi issue of scaling still persists with FerenOS unfortunately. I think that’s just a plasma issue. 
  • So I did try Solus Plasma a while back and I feel that it is the best Plasma Distro but I don’t recommend it anymore because they have fallen behind on the kernel (last I saw it was 5.6). I understand they have an LTS kernel as well but it’s not default and there have been many vulnerability patches applied to the kernel since 5.6. 
  • Even with how good FerenOS is I still went back to Linux Mint with the cinnamon desktop. Cinnamon just looks better to me and is the perfect balance between customizability and functionality. Also when I scale the desktop to anything between 100% and 200% it does not look wrong it scales everything appropriately. An example being when I set it to 125% on my HiDpi dell laptop it scales all aspects of the desktop exactly the same. In plasma unless you know how to edit the panel (which is not obvious) it remains the same size. Only downside to this on Cinnamon is when you set it to 125% 150% or 175% it has screen tearing and I am submitting a bug report for that asap.
  • One last thing I want to mention. I am trying out Manjaro Cinnamon as we speak. It is what I am recording my segment on Mintcast with and it’s given me some options that I would not have known about if I didn’t give it a go. More on this next time.

Joe

  • I have mostly stopped talking about books on here but I read 2 recently that I wanted to mention.  Ready Player 2 and Rhythm of War.  Both really good book and you should check them out as soon as you can
  • Well I decided to put one of the more messed up PSPs in a new cover.  Things did not go in my favor.
    • Was able to get it removed easy enough despite the stripped screws and wrong size screws from the last guy that took it apart.
    • Got it most of the way put back together when the power switch broke (it was loose before I swear)
    • I was able to desolder that power switch and one from a known bad board and move it over but had some trouble with the positioning so had to do it over again a couple of times until I ended up putting it at the far end of where it should sit
    • Also started having problems keeping the ribbon cable for it seated but was finally able to get that into place as well. 
    • Had to take it apart and put it back together in the new case several times due to small errors and needing to get the front of the case seated properly which never really happened
    • Because the one side of the mobo is higher than it should be, the joystick does not work and the volume down is stuck the way it was last time I tried to fix this device with a new front. Was really hoping that it was just the casing that was bent but this turned out to not be the case
    • Being disappointed in how that turned out I decided to pick up another broken psp for 20 dollars. The device supposedly had a broken screen and charging issues and I had an extra screen from this build. Well I got very lucky and the only thing wrong with the device was a bad battery and a broken casing.  One of the previous psps that I had purchased for 20 dollars had come with 2 extra sets of buttons as well as the full housing that I had just tried to use and a brand new piano black faceplate.  I put the faceplate on and put one of the batteries into it and it looks immaculate. I almost want to take it apart and verify that it is the original screen and not an upgraded one because of how good it looks.
    • Now I have a broken battery to work with as well which I will be able to use for a battery mod on a device with a umd drive in the future.  Or if I feel the need to do it for the sake of doing it. 
  • Tried to print some small thin items with PETG and it has not worked very well.  Evidently PETG does not do well in the 1mm range.  Granted it took me several tries with various settings to go and look at what other people had to say on the subject before I came to this conclusion.  So I may try the print in ABS and see how it turns out.  PLA works but is too soft for long term. I however think that ABS will be too brittle.   Maybe I should use carbon fiber or something similar but that would require a lot of refitting of my 3d printer
  • My laptop was overheating while gaming.  It was not doing this before so I don’t know if it was a change from the new update for Borderlands 3 or the laptop itself so I decided to take it apart and clean the fans and replace the thermal paste.  
    • This is not normally an overly difficult fix for my particular laptop, the MSI GE72-6QD 
    • But one of the screws that connect the heatsink to the CPU stripped at the top in a very inconvenient location down next to another heatsink and the arm that holds it all down is very thin.  The  only thing I could do was get out the dremel and the cutting bit and cut a new groove for a straight tip instead of a phillips head screwdriver
    • It worked and I didn’t mess it up.  It was very nerve wracking though cause it would not have taken much of a slip to ruin my laptop
    • Still happy with the results so far

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, November 29, 2020, at 2 pm Central Time, check for your local time!

https://everytimezone.com/s/1506acff

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 4794 mintCast 349 – NAT Ain’t A Firewall https://mintcast.org/mintcast-349-nat-aint-a-firewall/ Wed, 02 Dec 2020 05:18:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4788 Then in the news, OpenSUSE’s going public?, Pine64 feels the Plasma, and Linux gets Ray tracing.
In security, kill switches and a reminder that NAT ain’t a firewall.
Download
]]> Download

1:44 Wanderings
42:27 News
50:35 Security
59:43 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo has another helping of Pi, Moss gets spooked, Josh changes up the desktop, and Joe strips.

Then in the news, OpenSUSE’s going public?, Pine64 feels the Plasma, and Linux gets Ray tracing.

In security, kill switches and a reminder that NAT ain’t a firewall.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

Leo

  • Been playing with more Pi!
    • Dug up my old Pi 2, have some download automation running on it now. Made a VM of mine redundant. Considering converting it to a Gitea server to manage my notes.
    • Will relieve my i7 2630qm from Nextcloud duty. The Pi 4 is working beautifully. Now, what to do with it? Docker time?
    • Have some ideas for my old rickety Pi one. Use TMUX to ssh into multiple servers and run bpytop or some monitoring tool on a screen, 24/7. Basically, blinking lights. Raspbian Lite will likely do the job nicely.

Moss

  • I thought I had a problem with the FuzZ400…and before I determined what the problem was, I grabbed my now-repaired mini box and hooked it up. Just as I was tightening the screws on the case, I saw that my tablet, which had been plugged in for charging, was sitting on the keyboard. Problem solved, but too late to go back.
  • I had to reinstall everything on the Mini’s SSD except Mint and Manjaro, probably having to do with having been installed on a completely different computer (Xeon and Nvidia instead of i3 and Intel). 
  • I’ve added more partitions to my Kudu’s 1 Tb SSD. I now have 10 distro partitions, one of them unused. I installed Enso OS, and am probably going to review that for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest. I’m also trying 4M Linux on a USB stick, as it seems to be a Puppy-like version of Arch.
  • I had a lot of other issues, but I’ll save those for the next DHD, which should be out right about the time of the next mintCast.
  • Distrohoppers’ Digest now has 4 episodes with over 500 downloads – 1 of those over 600 –  and only 4 under 400. We’re averaging 463 downloads per episode. Episode 018 featured Dale Miracle live in studio for the first time. Dale covers distros NOT made for beginners, a welcome addition. The next episode is currently scheduled to be recorded on December 9.
  • I’ve been getting a few days’ work as a substitute teacher, but they keep closing the schools. Last week it was that they didn’t have enough healthy bus drivers, next week it’s that they don’t have enough teachers and subs. I got paychecks from Grainger Schools, All Women Housed, and finally from Census2020! I’m still way behind on lots of things, since it has been so long since I last had a paycheck.
  • I’m reading the Kevin Mitnick book. It did not convince me why I need that much security, and completely convinced me that I won’t be secure no matter how much time, effort, and money I spend. So why bother? I’m about to give up and give Google all my money.
  • We are working our way through Proven Guilty, in the Dresden Files series. Almost halfway through.

Josh

  • I have been trying out Plasma and really trying to give it a good shot. I tried openSUSE Tumbleweed first because it has a great plasma representation. It uses the newest plasma available because it’s a rolling release. I personally don’t like anything about default plasma, it just rubs me wrong. I quickly discovered that it just won’t work for me due to look & feel and settings issues. 
  • Next I tried Manjaro Plasma and that felt much better out of the gate. I could live with it as default but some small quarks just keep me at bay. Right clicking on both openSUSE and Manjaro resulted in a menu that I was unfamiliar with. You had to not only right click but then open a menu inside of the dialogue to get the open in terminal option. Also there is no open as root by default but as stated to me by Dale Miracle there is an add-on. The dolphin file browser also does not feel right to me for either of these first two distros I tried. Things get really out of hand when trying to compensate for HiDpi monitors. It’s so hard to get every aspect of the desktop to look right that I just gave up entirely and I tried for hours with both tweaking and resetting but nothing looked good. 
  • Finally I tried FerenOS and, by George, I think he’s done it. Next to Solus (which I will mention later) FerenOS has the best customized plasma desktop hands down. Everything looks proportionate, nothing seems out of place or not scaled right and he fixes the Dolphin issue by ripping it out and replacing it with good old Nemo! Theming is great and you can change everything, the dark or light theme, the accent color, and even the layout of plasma right from the welcome screen. Now that all being said the HiDpi issue of scaling still persists with FerenOS unfortunately. I think that’s just a plasma issue. 
  • So I did try Solus Plasma a while back and I feel that it is the best Plasma Distro but I don’t recommend it anymore because they have fallen behind on the kernel (last I saw it was 5.6). I understand they have an LTS kernel as well but it’s not default and there have been many vulnerability patches applied to the kernel since 5.6. 
  • Even with how good FerenOS is I still went back to Linux Mint with the cinnamon desktop. Cinnamon just looks better to me and is the perfect balance between customizability and functionality. Also when I scale the desktop to anything between 100% and 200% it does not look wrong it scales everything appropriately. An example being when I set it to 125% on my HiDpi dell laptop it scales all aspects of the desktop exactly the same. In plasma unless you know how to edit the panel (which is not obvious) it remains the same size. Only downside to this on Cinnamon is when you set it to 125% 150% or 175% it has screen tearing and I am submitting a bug report for that asap.
  • One last thing I want to mention. I am trying out Manjaro Cinnamon as we speak. It is what I am recording my segment on Mintcast with and it’s given me some options that I would not have known about if I didn’t give it a go. More on this next time.

Joe

  • I have mostly stopped talking about books on here but I read 2 recently that I wanted to mention.  Ready Player 2 and Rhythm of War.  Both really good book and you should check them out as soon as you can
  • Well I decided to put one of the more messed up PSPs in a new cover.  Things did not go in my favor.
    • Was able to get it removed easy enough despite the stripped screws and wrong size screws from the last guy that took it apart.
    • Got it most of the way put back together when the power switch broke (it was loose before I swear)
    • I was able to desolder that power switch and one from a known bad board and move it over but had some trouble with the positioning so had to do it over again a couple of times until I ended up putting it at the far end of where it should sit
    • Also started having problems keeping the ribbon cable for it seated but was finally able to get that into place as well. 
    • Had to take it apart and put it back together in the new case several times due to small errors and needing to get the front of the case seated properly which never really happened
    • Because the one side of the mobo is higher than it should be, the joystick does not work and the volume down is stuck the way it was last time I tried to fix this device with a new front. Was really hoping that it was just the casing that was bent but this turned out to not be the case
    • Being disappointed in how that turned out I decided to pick up another broken psp for 20 dollars. The device supposedly had a broken screen and charging issues and I had an extra screen from this build. Well I got very lucky and the only thing wrong with the device was a bad battery and a broken casing.  One of the previous psps that I had purchased for 20 dollars had come with 2 extra sets of buttons as well as the full housing that I had just tried to use and a brand new piano black faceplate.  I put the faceplate on and put one of the batteries into it and it looks immaculate. I almost want to take it apart and verify that it is the original screen and not an upgraded one because of how good it looks.
    • Now I have a broken battery to work with as well which I will be able to use for a battery mod on a device with a umd drive in the future.  Or if I feel the need to do it for the sake of doing it. 
  • Tried to print some small thin items with PETG and it has not worked very well.  Evidently PETG does not do well in the 1mm range.  Granted it took me several tries with various settings to go and look at what other people had to say on the subject before I came to this conclusion.  So I may try the print in ABS and see how it turns out.  PLA works but is too soft for long term. I however think that ABS will be too brittle.   Maybe I should use carbon fiber or something similar but that would require a lot of refitting of my 3d printer
  • My laptop was overheating while gaming.  It was not doing this before so I don’t know if it was a change from the new update for Borderlands 3 or the laptop itself so I decided to take it apart and clean the fans and replace the thermal paste.  
    • This is not normally an overly difficult fix for my particular laptop, the MSI GE72-6QD 
    • But one of the screws that connect the heatsink to the CPU stripped at the top in a very inconvenient location down next to another heatsink and the arm that holds it all down is very thin.  The  only thing I could do was get out the dremel and the cutting bit and cut a new groove for a straight tip instead of a phillips head screwdriver
    • It worked and I didn’t mess it up.  It was very nerve wracking though cause it would not have taken much of a slip to ruin my laptop
    • Still happy with the results so far

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, November 29, 2020, at 2 pm Central Time, check for your local time!

https://everytimezone.com/s/1506acff

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 4788 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 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 328 – Sigh-DPI https://mintcast.org/mintcast-328-sigh-dpi/ Wed, 12 Feb 2020 05:51:56 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4215 Then in our news, Linux Mint goes HiDPI, Proton open-sources its VPN, Kernel 5.4 makes long-term support waves, Wireguard lands in Kernel 5.6, and more.
In security, your data is not safe. But we already knew that!
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo says Kernel 5.5 is the best and worst thing ever, Moss works on Distrohopper’s Digest, Joe is booking it again, and Bo is getting ready for a test.

Then in our news, Linux Mint goes HiDPI, Proton open-sources its VPN, Kernel 5.4 makes long-term support waves, Wireguard lands in Kernel 5.6, and more.

In security, your data is not safe. But we already knew that!

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Kernel 5.5 fixed everything and improved gaming performance!
    • A development snapshot of mesa 20 broke everything!
    • Updating to 5.5.2 and the February 8th development snapshot of mesa fixed everything again!
    • What a ride
  • Moss
    • Distrohoppers’ Digest has moved into double digit episode numbers, with Episode 10 recorded on February 5th. Download numbers are well above what we expected when we started this project.
    • I’m getting my Galago Pro 2 reconfigured after the Mint Crash. The actual cause was a Grub mess-up, but until I really learn how to work with Grub it’s just easier to reinstall.  Anyone who wants to know what my current 7 installations are can ask me in Telegram.
    • I installed OpenMandriva 4.1 on my Kudu, currently residing along with Feren OS and Ubuntu Budgie. It looks really good. But I still don’t know the package manager, and have no idea whether I can get Mullvad on it.
    • On Feb 3, I got word that I have been added to the team at Ubuntu Budgie. While this is exciting, and I’ve been added to the Ubuntu Budgie Discourse and Slack, I still don’t know how to actually do anything when I find something to fix. At any rate, Leo was wrong, my next podcast project will be BudgieCast.
    • We’re getting deep into Fool Moon, the second of the Dresden Files series. I read the graphic novel of it, and it hardly scratches the surface of the novel itself. Especially the chapter where he is wiped out to the point of getting to talk to his subconscious self. Good stuff. Firecat has managed to get me copies of the rest of the books, so we won’t have to stop reading just because I’m a pauper.
    • Work is being stressful, although I’m still employed; It would be more stressful if I were not.  I keep getting ideas of how to move on into other work, and keep running into the papercut issues which are bad enough to prevent me from moving forward with those ideas.  If people really did want to move to Linux from Windows 7, I can’t think of anyone better than myself to do those installations. 
    • I went out this morning to drive for Postmates, just another food delivery service but one which averages more income than GrubHub or Uber Eats, and found to my chagrin that I did not have one essential tool with me. So I had to drive home and I’ll try again tomorrow.     
  • Joe
    • Good reading
      • Found a copy of Demon Squad
        • Simple read and not for everyone but I enjoyed it 
      • Catching up on podcasts
      • Wanted a quick read so I also listened to one of my favorites: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
        • If you did not like the movie give the book a try
        • If you did like the movie definitely give the book a try 
      • Wax and Wayne series from Brandon Sanderson
        • I really like the first 2 books
        • Third book isn’t as good and the fourth book should be coming this year
    • Picked up a Pi 4 and a couple more pi Zeros
      • Still debating projects for the Zeros.
      • Testing out the 4
      • Will give my impressions on it at a later date
    • Having been researching Pi projects, I think I like the project for multiroom audio.
      • Don’t know if I have a use for it but it does seem fun
      • And I have 3 Pi Zeros ready to go
    • Also thinking about soldering a USB hub onto one of the Zeros.
      • Kinda negates the point of the zero but still a cool project and it is still cheaper than a 3B
      • Using a slim hub would not add much space.
    • Working on a new set of scripts to automatically convert and transfer newly purchased Amazon ebooks
      • Will work a lot like my automation of torrents
      • Purchase and download book on any of my devices
      • Move to a location on said device that uses resilio sync
      • Automatically gets transfered to my server which then moves it to another location
      • Book gets converted to epub or mobi, then the original and the copy get moved to my calibre library and a copy of the converted file gets moved to a resilio location that transfers to my phone. 
      • This then can be played using voice aloud.
    • Broke my second pair of Earforce z2’s  Not sure how they ended up breaking while sitting on my desk at work but they did, and I can’t find anyone selling the replacement bands unless I want to buy them from aliexpress and I don’t.  So I am looking for alternatives
    • I had purchased a lot of ‘as is’ wireless tv headphones with base stations from Sony (wh-rf400r if curious) so that I could give 2 of them to my dad and step mom for christmas and a have a few extra.  I was hoping that the hooks on them were the correct size but no such luck
    • They were however correct enough in size for a pair of Skullcandy Hesh 3’s that I had picked up from a previous job lot of broken headphones and the hesh’s only issue was a broken band.  I had to drill the hook holes a bit larger and cut back some of the internal bracing on the Hesh’s but now they work great
      • The Hesh are a great sounding pair of headphones with nice soft earpads and the new band provides a nice amount of clamping force.  I do need to make sure I put my ears in the earcups just the right way because the cups are pretty small. Otherwise the amount of time I can wear them is fairly small.  Also the batteries are pretty good considering how much time these set on a shelf waiting for me to find parts for them
      • Also very easy to work on with well placed easily accessible solder joins
      • Also the sonys have extra cables that run through the band, i was thinking about seeing what the output voltage is and seeing if i could use the base to charge the battery in the hesh
    • In testing the Pi 4 i had some networking issues because the wifi adapter in the pi is not very good
      • I don’t want to get into too many details on the Pi
      • But here is what I tried
      • External USB wifi.
      • Wifi router as bridge
        • This is the fault of the router though as it was an older one that had issues.  This fix should have worked and provided better speeds and stability
      • Brought back my powerline adapters and this greatly helped although it has not fixed all the networking issues
  • Bo
    • Missing you guys
    • Using terminal for as much as possible to prepare for LPIC, even for simple tasks.
      • Cat, join, sort
      • Ls | Xargs chmod 755
    • AWX
      • Credential manager
      • Inventory management
      • Roles
    • non -linux life
      • Tabletop RPGs
      • Star Trek Adventures podcast

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

  • Our Next Episode will be live Feb 23, 2020. 2PM CST, 8PM UTC

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> full 4215 mintCast 328 – Sigh-DPI (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-328-sigh-dpi-mp3/ Wed, 12 Feb 2020 05:51:18 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4213 Then in our news, Linux Mint goes HiDPI, Proton open-sources its VPN, Kernel 5.4 makes long-term support waves, Wireguard lands in Kernel 5.6, and more.
In security, your data is not safe. But we already knew that!
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo says Kernel 5.5 is the best and worst thing ever, Moss works on Distrohopper’s Digest, Joe is booking it again, and Bo is getting ready for a test.

Then in our news, Linux Mint goes HiDPI, Proton open-sources its VPN, Kernel 5.4 makes long-term support waves, Wireguard lands in Kernel 5.6, and more.

In security, your data is not safe. But we already knew that!

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Kernel 5.5 fixed everything and improved gaming performance!
    • A development snapshot of mesa 20 broke everything!
    • Updating to 5.5.2 and the February 8th development snapshot of mesa fixed everything again!
    • What a ride
  • Moss
    • Distrohoppers’ Digest has moved into double digit episode numbers, with Episode 10 recorded on February 5th. Download numbers are well above what we expected when we started this project.
    • I’m getting my Galago Pro 2 reconfigured after the Mint Crash. The actual cause was a Grub mess-up, but until I really learn how to work with Grub it’s just easier to reinstall.  Anyone who wants to know what my current 7 installations are can ask me in Telegram.
    • I installed OpenMandriva 4.1 on my Kudu, currently residing along with Feren OS and Ubuntu Budgie. It looks really good. But I still don’t know the package manager, and have no idea whether I can get Mullvad on it.
    • On Feb 3, I got word that I have been added to the team at Ubuntu Budgie. While this is exciting, and I’ve been added to the Ubuntu Budgie Discourse and Slack, I still don’t know how to actually do anything when I find something to fix. At any rate, Leo was wrong, my next podcast project will be BudgieCast.
    • We’re getting deep into Fool Moon, the second of the Dresden Files series. I read the graphic novel of it, and it hardly scratches the surface of the novel itself. Especially the chapter where he is wiped out to the point of getting to talk to his subconscious self. Good stuff. Firecat has managed to get me copies of the rest of the books, so we won’t have to stop reading just because I’m a pauper.
    • Work is being stressful, although I’m still employed; It would be more stressful if I were not.  I keep getting ideas of how to move on into other work, and keep running into the papercut issues which are bad enough to prevent me from moving forward with those ideas.  If people really did want to move to Linux from Windows 7, I can’t think of anyone better than myself to do those installations. 
    • I went out this morning to drive for Postmates, just another food delivery service but one which averages more income than GrubHub or Uber Eats, and found to my chagrin that I did not have one essential tool with me. So I had to drive home and I’ll try again tomorrow.     
  • Joe
    • Good reading
      • Found a copy of Demon Squad
        • Simple read and not for everyone but I enjoyed it 
      • Catching up on podcasts
      • Wanted a quick read so I also listened to one of my favorites: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
        • If you did not like the movie give the book a try
        • If you did like the movie definitely give the book a try 
      • Wax and Wayne series from Brandon Sanderson
        • I really like the first 2 books
        • Third book isn’t as good and the fourth book should be coming this year
    • Picked up a Pi 4 and a couple more pi Zeros
      • Still debating projects for the Zeros.
      • Testing out the 4
      • Will give my impressions on it at a later date
    • Having been researching Pi projects, I think I like the project for multiroom audio.
      • Don’t know if I have a use for it but it does seem fun
      • And I have 3 Pi Zeros ready to go
    • Also thinking about soldering a USB hub onto one of the Zeros.
      • Kinda negates the point of the zero but still a cool project and it is still cheaper than a 3B
      • Using a slim hub would not add much space.
    • Working on a new set of scripts to automatically convert and transfer newly purchased Amazon ebooks
      • Will work a lot like my automation of torrents
      • Purchase and download book on any of my devices
      • Move to a location on said device that uses resilio sync
      • Automatically gets transfered to my server which then moves it to another location
      • Book gets converted to epub or mobi, then the original and the copy get moved to my calibre library and a copy of the converted file gets moved to a resilio location that transfers to my phone. 
      • This then can be played using voice aloud.
    • Broke my second pair of Earforce z2’s  Not sure how they ended up breaking while sitting on my desk at work but they did, and I can’t find anyone selling the replacement bands unless I want to buy them from aliexpress and I don’t.  So I am looking for alternatives
    • I had purchased a lot of ‘as is’ wireless tv headphones with base stations from Sony (wh-rf400r if curious) so that I could give 2 of them to my dad and step mom for christmas and a have a few extra.  I was hoping that the hooks on them were the correct size but no such luck
    • They were however correct enough in size for a pair of Skullcandy Hesh 3’s that I had picked up from a previous job lot of broken headphones and the hesh’s only issue was a broken band.  I had to drill the hook holes a bit larger and cut back some of the internal bracing on the Hesh’s but now they work great
      • The Hesh are a great sounding pair of headphones with nice soft earpads and the new band provides a nice amount of clamping force.  I do need to make sure I put my ears in the earcups just the right way because the cups are pretty small. Otherwise the amount of time I can wear them is fairly small.  Also the batteries are pretty good considering how much time these set on a shelf waiting for me to find parts for them
      • Also very easy to work on with well placed easily accessible solder joins
      • Also the sonys have extra cables that run through the band, i was thinking about seeing what the output voltage is and seeing if i could use the base to charge the battery in the hesh
    • In testing the Pi 4 i had some networking issues because the wifi adapter in the pi is not very good
      • I don’t want to get into too many details on the Pi
      • But here is what I tried
      • External USB wifi.
      • Wifi router as bridge
        • This is the fault of the router though as it was an older one that had issues.  This fix should have worked and provided better speeds and stability
      • Brought back my powerline adapters and this greatly helped although it has not fixed all the networking issues
  • Bo
    • Missing you guys
    • Using terminal for as much as possible to prepare for LPIC, even for simple tasks.
      • Cat, join, sort
      • Ls | Xargs chmod 755
    • AWX
      • Credential manager
      • Inventory management
      • Roles
    • non -linux life
      • Tabletop RPGs
      • Star Trek Adventures podcast

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

  • Our Next Episode will be live Feb 23, 2020. 2PM CST, 8PM UTC

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> full 4213