In our Innards section: Bill explains the current mintCast infrastructure

In “Check This Out” we share a call for new shows by Hacker Public Radio

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

1. 00:00:00 – Intro
2. 00:01:06 – Innards
3. 00:40:07 – Check This Out
4. 00:45:07 – Housekeeping and Announcemnts
5. 00:45:48 – Wrap Up
6. 00:48:49 – Outro

Contact Info:

• Joe – Tllts.org,  linuxlugcast.com, jb@mintcast.org, Buy Joe a coffee
• Moss – Full Circle Weekly News, Distrohoppers’ Digest, bardmoss@pm.me, Mastodon @zaivala@hostux.social
• Bill – bill@mintcast.org, Bill_H on Discord, @wchouser3@fosstodon.org on Mastodon, also – checkout my other podcasts Linux OTC and 3 Fat Truckers
• Majid – drmajid@mintcast.org @atypicaldr870on twitter, AtypicalDr on instagram and The Atypical Doctor Podcast on Spotify
• Eric – You can hear and see me on this and the Linux OTC and Distrohoppers’ Digest podcasts as well as the Linux Saloon and LinuxLUGCast streams. If you’d like to get in touch with me I can be reached by email at eric@mintcast.org, Discord (eric_adams), Telegram (https://t.me/ericadams), Matrix (@esa1975:matrix.org), and Mastodon (https://fosstodon.org/@ericadams). Links in the show notes.

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!>

In our Wanderings, Joe talks about the HPR New Year Show, Norbert watched a new series, Bill has been on the grind with cold temperatures, Nishant joined the Serenity OS team and Moss is back

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

The News

• Mint 20.3 Una
• PipeWire 0.3.43 Released With Many Fixes
• Solus Linux Co-Lead Resigns, Joins Serpent OS and Plans to Fork Budgie Under a New Organization
• KDE Gets A 2022 Roadmap – Plasma Wayland To Shine, Updated Breeze Icons
• Enlightenment 0.25 Desktop Environment Released
• Steam On Linux Ended 2021 At 1.11% Marketshare

Security Update

• New Ubuntu Linux Kernel Security Updates Fix 9 Vulnerabilities, Patch Now
• AMD Ryzen 6000 Series Mobile CPUs Feature Microsoft’s Pluton Security

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

• Joe
  • HPR New Year Show, headphones, fixing laptop, CES
• Norbert
  • Arcane, Gentoo
• Moss
  • ThinkPad, Distrohoppers’ Digest
• Bill
  • Setting up a new desktop, Bodhi Linux
• Nishant
  • Serenity OS, birthday

Announcements

• Our next episode will be Sunday, January 23, 2022 at 2 pm US Central Standard Time, 8 pm UTC/GMT.
• Check when this will be in your local timezone
• Our next Saturday live stream will be Saturday, JJanuary 15, 2022 at 2 pm US Central Standard Time, 8 pm UTC/GMT.
  Check when this will be in your local timezone

Wrap-up

• Joe – Tllts.org, linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, jb@mintcast.org, Buy Joe a coffee
• Norbert – norbert@mintcast.org
• The Other Other Josh – jt@mintcast.org, Josh Thacker on Discord, and @Metal_FOSS on Twitter
• Nishant – nishant@mintcast.org,riconghost on instagram, riconghost@Github, Ghost.Ricon on DIscord, maverick00783 @ Steam
• Moss – bardmoss@pm.me, you can hear me on Distrohoppers’ Digest and Full Circle Weekly News, and you can find more contact information for me on It’s MOSS.
• Bill – bill@mintcast.org, @wchouser3 on Twitter,and  Bill_H on Discord

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!>

LINUX INNARDS:

What Did We Get Wrong?

• Joe
  • We will see many more operating systems that are optimized and working for the Raspberry Pi 4.  
    • https://itsfoss.com/raspberry-pi-os/ 
  • Probably also see a new slim version sometime this year
    • https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/compute-module-4/?variant=raspberry-pi-cm4001000 
  • Microsoft will push more towards applications that can run on either operating system.  We will still be blind to their evil plans.
    • Edge, Teams, no Office yet 
  • The announcement for Edge OS will be towards the end of the year
    • Nope
  • 3 or 2.5
• Leo
  • Microsoft Office will have a native Linux version released
  • Adobe Photoshop will have a native Linux version released
  • AutoCAD will have a native Linux version released
    • Nope, Nope, and Nope
  • Moss will record a Gentoo show
    • Moss has moved away from Gentoo but is getting closer to Bodhi, and even started a Bodhi Telegram group which is semi-official
  • Firefox vs. The World. Firefox will be the last popular non-Chromium holdout.
    • The key word is “popular”. At the current rate, that soon won’t include Firefox. Gnome Web and Safari (Mac only) are also still blink-free.
  • 1
• Tony H
  • Linux Driver support will continue to improve and more hardware manufacturers (Nvidia I’m looking at you) will develop open source Linux Drivers. 
    • Nope
  • I was banking on a New R.Pi revision if not a totally new model, I still think that adding M.2 support, as other SBC manufacturers have, is the way to go in the long term. But this will probably require a totally new board design and may still be a year or 2 away. It may be that someone designs an add on board that will provide this function, but if they do it needs to be a device that allows the drive to be the boot drive.  
    • As for Driver support not much has changed with this so that is probably a Zero  
    • But I nailed it in respect of the Pi, a new compute module 4 was released which if you get a board to plug it that has a PCIe slot you can add a M.2 SATA board and use this for the drive storage. Also the Pi 400 was also released which is a totally new model based on the Pi 4 chipset but clocked at 1800MHz and with a totally new layout that allows for a good passive heat sink across the whole of the board that sits in the Keyboard.
  • 2  100 percent
• Moss
  • Now that Canonical has agreements with Microsoft for WSL and Amazon for Ubuntu Pro and AWS, I predict they will begin (or continue, if they have already begun in secret) working on agreements with other megacorps such as Alphabet, Oracle, SAP, and Apache.
    • Nope. All wrong. Or they kept it quite well-hidden.
  • If they succeed with any one of these new alliances, they will be insulated from potential buyouts and takeovers. I therefore predict this is the year they go IPO.
    • If not-A then not-B. But SUSE is rumored to be heading for an IPO in 2021.
• Tony W
  • Maru OS will significantly expand supported devices
    • Will add support for a Oneplus device, very likely 3/3T
    • Will also add support for Galaxy Note devices, Note 9 and/or Note 10
      • Nope
  • We will see convergence on Pine64 devices, with Pinephone able to dock to peripherals and run full desktop applications
    • Oh, Yeah
  • A big box store will sell a PC preconfigured with Linux in 2020
    • Nope
• Oliver Kelly
  • End of Windows 7 support won’t increase the Linux desktop uptake
    • Point
  • Intel’s new Graphics card wont suck on Linux
    • Not released yet.
• Erik Lietz
  • 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)
    • Although not out of business but Purism has been much much quieter in 2020 than they were in 2019.
  • 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)
    • Pine64 has been a joy to watch their activity in 2020. So much I have just received my Manjaro edition PinePhone. What a great product for $200.
  • 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)
    • Dud on this one… As a side note for our business we are looking to migrate away from AutoCAD.
  • Microsoft will offer Office 365 on Linux
    (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint at a minimum will be running natively on Linux, no Wine, no web apps)
    • Again a zero – although we are using Edge on Linux in the office for our web accounting systeming.
  • 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)
    • I claim a handicap on this one as with all the goings on people weren’t allowed in stores most of the year. Although, both HP and Lenovo in particular have made major releases with Linux including both Fedora and Ubuntu on a whole bunch of Lenovo products. [Moss: Don’t forget that Dell increased their offerings of Linux machines.]

What About Next Year?

• Leo
  •  Apple’s M1 Air and Pro will work moderately well on Linux.
  • Microsoft Office will have a native Linux version released.
  • Everybody focuses on the browser and not the CEO. Firefox sees an upswing in users. 5% and going up.
• Joe
  • Red Hat will somehow disappoint us more over the next year and become even more corporate.
  • Game streaming services will have a very good year and become much more common.  Steam will release a Stadia competitor, with no local install.
  • It will be both a good year and a bad year for linux because of online services.  There will be many more ‘computers’ using the linux kernel but not actually linux. Similar to the chromebook.
• Tony H
  • Well as I have been successful with my Pi predictions I’m going to do another one and  go way out on a limb and  suggest we may be heading for a Pi 5 or at least a Pi 4+. I will also predict that the Pi 400 will get a revision with 8Gb of RAM and possibly a further overclock of the CPU so those not comfortable doing things like that will have a 2.1Ghz CPU out of the box, as with the very good passive cooling it has been shown to be very stable at this clock speed.
• Moss
  • Distrohoppers’ Digest will exceed 18,000 total downloads. (this would require our average downloads per episode to exceed 600, and at least 10 episodes)
  • At least 6 long-standing distros (3 years or longer) will close or merge, and be replaced by at least 8 new distros – at least 4 of them forks of what just closed shop.
  • I and/or my wife will have a job which pays enough for our needs and will survive 2021 much better than we did 2020.
  • Covid will be a minor irritation by the end of the year, not a world-spanning pandemic and contact-tracking apps will be a thing of the past.
• Josh Hawk
  • Linux phones will double in number and power in 2021
  • All mainstream cable tv channels will switch to apps.
  • Firefox will be given to the community to maintain (maybe for the better) or be so underfunded that they will lay off almost all working on it.
• Erik Lietz 
  • Wayland – the transition to Wayland will become much more prevalent or mainstream among distributions in 2021. It won’t completely transition from X but it will gain much more traction in 2021. (Hedge! hedge!) (Durden!)
  • Microsoft Office 365 natively on Linux (repeat of 2020).
  • A Linux phone (probably the Pine Phone) will be available for the ‘average’ consumer in 2021 and be able to be a daily driver phone.
  • Warpinator will expand to almost all distributions and become the ‘go to’ solution for easy computer to computer file transactions similar to the Apple AirDrop.
  • A new, independent non-Chrome based web browser will enter the market. This will either push Mozilla to retool and reinvigorate Firefox or the downward spin will speed up.
• Owen Peery
  • Raspberry Pi will continue to develop either the 4 or the 400 so that all the models can easily come with 8G RAM minimum and with processor speeds above 2 Ghz with no overclocking necessary
    • So more distros will function on it, and it can BE A REPLACEMENT for low end Chromebooks that are pretty crappy
  • Linux podcasts will continue to fumble advertising and promotion and alienate their listeners as they pile on more and more promotional spots. Spots for legitimate companies, who might even be our friends, and support our interests, but the sheer number of spots we hear each week as we listen to our favorite podcasts, turns the signal into noise, and noise that we will ignore. Let’s not adopt the advertising models that many of us are trying to get away from, we can do better.
  • Linux audio will get better as Pipewire rolls out in more places. Even if it’s not widely adopted at the beginning it will show a simpler path forward is possible.
  • Linux influencers will continue to wring their hands about the perpetual issue of lack of diversity in the Linux ecosystem, while at the same time, failing to take public stands against white supremacy and toxic masculinity in our very community. It’s not enough to just invite people from underrepresented groups to our spaces, we have to make sure our spaces are not hostile to the very people some of us are trying to include. This is where a lot of growth in Linux use and adoption can happen, but will it?
  • Software for creative endeavors will continue to get better and better on Linux so hobbyists can make our fun pet projects, on software that works, that has tons of options to make it pretty, AND that doesn’t have an obtuse soul crushing work flow. Sometimes we focus on getting the pro level users a good experience on Linux software, but I think the hobbyists are where we should focus. A pro level user probably works for a company that already has a license locked in, and has an entire workflow based on proprietary solutions, and dozens, if not hundreds of employees, so that will be a hard nut to crack.
  • The onboarding path for beginners will not get easier. The time investment needed to get up to speed on some basic tasks will continue to be just enough to scare off the competent but casual users, let alone semi incompetent users. We need to either change that or accept that Linux might not be a good option for beginners. If we want to make space for beginners in Linux, we must hold space, without judgments, for beginners, and bring them in with intention, not left in the wild.
• Josh Lowe
  • Ubuntu support on Raspberry Pi will improve dramatically and become as popular or overtake Raspbian as the main Raspberry Pi OS
  • We could see an Official Raspberry Pi Laptop
  • a RISC-V Powered RPi
• Oliver Kelly
  • A new demonstration of MS <3 Linux with desktop compatible Office suite via Electron or some container system like Snap or LXD.
• Utopic Unicorn (Discord)
  • Canonical will go closed source.
  • Linux Mint will see a huge controversy.
  • Manjaro gets shut down.
  • Arco linux sees a huge increase in new users.
  • Redhat gets decimated in the server industry in favour of other distros including Debian.
• rockhazard (Discord)
  • MS will *drop* development of Edge for Linux. (a man can hope)
• Sundaram (Telegram)
  • Proton/Wine will support EAC
  • Matrix users will skyrocket.
  • Linux will run on Apple M1.
  • Lots and lots of ARM devices.
  • RISC-V will grow a lot.
  • Nvidia will open source its drivers. (Lol)
  • Due to the release of many cloud gaming platforms fragmentation will occur (also timed exclusives will be more common).
• J Arun Mani (Telegram)
  • Microsoft will expand its poison net: WSL, VSCode and many things that will prevent users from really moving to Linux
  • Adobe will continue to call Linux a modest platform
  • Emacs will become more modern and beginner friendly.
• Dave Goldsbrough (Twitter)
  • (More of a wish!) Accessibility will be much better in Linux.
• Joussef Jouda 
  • No innovative changes in Linux in 2021

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

• Clay Stone
• From Alex
• Brad Alexander
• Avinash

CHECK THIS OUT! 

• Tony H
  • Mince meat and mince pies – Recipe to make your own Mincemeat 
  • HPR New year marathon show, starts 10.00 UTC 31st December 2020 – ends 12.00 UTC 1st Jan 2021 
• Joe
  • Greg Doucette YouTube channel
• Erik
  • Grsync – GUI for rsync http://www.opbyte.it/grsync/
  • Super Productivity – task management, to-do, and time tracking https://super-productivity.com/

Announcements:

• Our next show will be Sunday, January 10, at 2:00pm Central US Time.
• Get the showtime converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

• Joe – www.Tllts.org,  www.linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, jb@mintcast.org 
• Bo – undercastnetwork.com , YouTube Undercast Collective
• Moss – Peaceful Hippo, It’s Moss, MeWe, @bardictriad on Twitter, blogs on Peaceful Hippo, LinuxQuestions.org, and Dreamwidth, music on Bandcamp and my YouTube channel or Robert Warren’s channel, moss@mintcast.org, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com, Sponsus!!
• Tony Hughes – HPR –  http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=338, Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/, Twitter @TonyH1212, th@mintcast.org, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com 
• Tony Watts – tw@mintcast.org, Echoes of Savages (band)
• Josh Hawk – joshontech@protonmail.com, @joshontech on Twitter and most other social sites.
• Leo – leochavez.org and @leochavez on Twitter, leo@mintcast.org, linuxuserspace.show and you can get your five minute news digest at Full Circle Weekly News 

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!>

LINUX INNARDS:

What Did We Get Wrong?

• Joe
  • We will see many more operating systems that are optimized and working for the Raspberry Pi 4.  
    • https://itsfoss.com/raspberry-pi-os/ 
  • Probably also see a new slim version sometime this year
    • https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/compute-module-4/?variant=raspberry-pi-cm4001000 
  • Microsoft will push more towards applications that can run on either operating system.  We will still be blind to their evil plans.
    • Edge, Teams, no Office yet 
  • The announcement for Edge OS will be towards the end of the year
    • Nope
  • 3 or 2.5
• Leo
  • Microsoft Office will have a native Linux version released
  • Adobe Photoshop will have a native Linux version released
  • AutoCAD will have a native Linux version released
    • Nope, Nope, and Nope
  • Moss will record a Gentoo show
    • Moss has moved away from Gentoo but is getting closer to Bodhi, and even started a Bodhi Telegram group which is semi-official
  • Firefox vs. The World. Firefox will be the last popular non-Chromium holdout.
    • The key word is “popular”. At the current rate, that soon won’t include Firefox. Gnome Web and Safari (Mac only) are also still blink-free.
  • 1
• Tony H
  • Linux Driver support will continue to improve and more hardware manufacturers (Nvidia I’m looking at you) will develop open source Linux Drivers. 
    • Nope
  • I was banking on a New R.Pi revision if not a totally new model, I still think that adding M.2 support, as other SBC manufacturers have, is the way to go in the long term. But this will probably require a totally new board design and may still be a year or 2 away. It may be that someone designs an add on board that will provide this function, but if they do it needs to be a device that allows the drive to be the boot drive.  
    • As for Driver support not much has changed with this so that is probably a Zero  
    • But I nailed it in respect of the Pi, a new compute module 4 was released which if you get a board to plug it that has a PCIe slot you can add a M.2 SATA board and use this for the drive storage. Also the Pi 400 was also released which is a totally new model based on the Pi 4 chipset but clocked at 1800MHz and with a totally new layout that allows for a good passive heat sink across the whole of the board that sits in the Keyboard.
  • 2  100 percent
• Moss
  • Now that Canonical has agreements with Microsoft for WSL and Amazon for Ubuntu Pro and AWS, I predict they will begin (or continue, if they have already begun in secret) working on agreements with other megacorps such as Alphabet, Oracle, SAP, and Apache.
    • Nope. All wrong. Or they kept it quite well-hidden.
  • If they succeed with any one of these new alliances, they will be insulated from potential buyouts and takeovers. I therefore predict this is the year they go IPO.
    • If not-A then not-B. But SUSE is rumored to be heading for an IPO in 2021.
• Tony W
  • Maru OS will significantly expand supported devices
    • Will add support for a Oneplus device, very likely 3/3T
    • Will also add support for Galaxy Note devices, Note 9 and/or Note 10
      • Nope
  • We will see convergence on Pine64 devices, with Pinephone able to dock to peripherals and run full desktop applications
    • Oh, Yeah
  • A big box store will sell a PC preconfigured with Linux in 2020
    • Nope
• Oliver Kelly
  • End of Windows 7 support won’t increase the Linux desktop uptake
    • Point
  • Intel’s new Graphics card wont suck on Linux
    • Not released yet.
• Erik Lietz
  • 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)
    • Although not out of business but Purism has been much much quieter in 2020 than they were in 2019.
  • 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)
    • Pine64 has been a joy to watch their activity in 2020. So much I have just received my Manjaro edition PinePhone. What a great product for $200.
  • 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)
    • Dud on this one… As a side note for our business we are looking to migrate away from AutoCAD.
  • Microsoft will offer Office 365 on Linux
    (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint at a minimum will be running natively on Linux, no Wine, no web apps)
    • Again a zero – although we are using Edge on Linux in the office for our web accounting systeming.
  • 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)
    • I claim a handicap on this one as with all the goings on people weren’t allowed in stores most of the year. Although, both HP and Lenovo in particular have made major releases with Linux including both Fedora and Ubuntu on a whole bunch of Lenovo products. [Moss: Don’t forget that Dell increased their offerings of Linux machines.]

What About Next Year?

• Leo
  •  Apple’s M1 Air and Pro will work moderately well on Linux.
  • Microsoft Office will have a native Linux version released.
  • Everybody focuses on the browser and not the CEO. Firefox sees an upswing in users. 5% and going up.
• Joe
  • Red Hat will somehow disappoint us more over the next year and become even more corporate.
  • Game streaming services will have a very good year and become much more common.  Steam will release a Stadia competitor, with no local install.
  • It will be both a good year and a bad year for linux because of online services.  There will be many more ‘computers’ using the linux kernel but not actually linux. Similar to the chromebook.
• Tony H
  • Well as I have been successful with my Pi predictions I’m going to do another one and  go way out on a limb and  suggest we may be heading for a Pi 5 or at least a Pi 4+. I will also predict that the Pi 400 will get a revision with 8Gb of RAM and possibly a further overclock of the CPU so those not comfortable doing things like that will have a 2.1Ghz CPU out of the box, as with the very good passive cooling it has been shown to be very stable at this clock speed.
• Moss
  • Distrohoppers’ Digest will exceed 18,000 total downloads. (this would require our average downloads per episode to exceed 600, and at least 10 episodes)
  • At least 6 long-standing distros (3 years or longer) will close or merge, and be replaced by at least 8 new distros – at least 4 of them forks of what just closed shop.
  • I and/or my wife will have a job which pays enough for our needs and will survive 2021 much better than we did 2020.
  • Covid will be a minor irritation by the end of the year, not a world-spanning pandemic and contact-tracking apps will be a thing of the past.
• Josh Hawk
  • Linux phones will double in number and power in 2021
  • All mainstream cable tv channels will switch to apps.
  • Firefox will be given to the community to maintain (maybe for the better) or be so underfunded that they will lay off almost all working on it.
• Erik Lietz 
  • Wayland – the transition to Wayland will become much more prevalent or mainstream among distributions in 2021. It won’t completely transition from X but it will gain much more traction in 2021. (Hedge! hedge!) (Durden!)
  • Microsoft Office 365 natively on Linux (repeat of 2020).
  • A Linux phone (probably the Pine Phone) will be available for the ‘average’ consumer in 2021 and be able to be a daily driver phone.
  • Warpinator will expand to almost all distributions and become the ‘go to’ solution for easy computer to computer file transactions similar to the Apple AirDrop.
  • A new, independent non-Chrome based web browser will enter the market. This will either push Mozilla to retool and reinvigorate Firefox or the downward spin will speed up.
• Owen Peery
  • Raspberry Pi will continue to develop either the 4 or the 400 so that all the models can easily come with 8G RAM minimum and with processor speeds above 2 Ghz with no overclocking necessary
    • So more distros will function on it, and it can BE A REPLACEMENT for low end Chromebooks that are pretty crappy
  • Linux podcasts will continue to fumble advertising and promotion and alienate their listeners as they pile on more and more promotional spots. Spots for legitimate companies, who might even be our friends, and support our interests, but the sheer number of spots we hear each week as we listen to our favorite podcasts, turns the signal into noise, and noise that we will ignore. Let’s not adopt the advertising models that many of us are trying to get away from, we can do better.
  • Linux audio will get better as Pipewire rolls out in more places. Even if it’s not widely adopted at the beginning it will show a simpler path forward is possible.
  • Linux influencers will continue to wring their hands about the perpetual issue of lack of diversity in the Linux ecosystem, while at the same time, failing to take public stands against white supremacy and toxic masculinity in our very community. It’s not enough to just invite people from underrepresented groups to our spaces, we have to make sure our spaces are not hostile to the very people some of us are trying to include. This is where a lot of growth in Linux use and adoption can happen, but will it?
  • Software for creative endeavors will continue to get better and better on Linux so hobbyists can make our fun pet projects, on software that works, that has tons of options to make it pretty, AND that doesn’t have an obtuse soul crushing work flow. Sometimes we focus on getting the pro level users a good experience on Linux software, but I think the hobbyists are where we should focus. A pro level user probably works for a company that already has a license locked in, and has an entire workflow based on proprietary solutions, and dozens, if not hundreds of employees, so that will be a hard nut to crack.
  • The onboarding path for beginners will not get easier. The time investment needed to get up to speed on some basic tasks will continue to be just enough to scare off the competent but casual users, let alone semi incompetent users. We need to either change that or accept that Linux might not be a good option for beginners. If we want to make space for beginners in Linux, we must hold space, without judgments, for beginners, and bring them in with intention, not left in the wild.
• Josh Lowe
  • Ubuntu support on Raspberry Pi will improve dramatically and become as popular or overtake Raspbian as the main Raspberry Pi OS
  • We could see an Official Raspberry Pi Laptop
  • a RISC-V Powered RPi
• Oliver Kelly
  • A new demonstration of MS <3 Linux with desktop compatible Office suite via Electron or some container system like Snap or LXD.
• Utopic Unicorn (Discord)
  • Canonical will go closed source.
  • Linux Mint will see a huge controversy.
  • Manjaro gets shut down.
  • Arco linux sees a huge increase in new users.
  • Redhat gets decimated in the server industry in favour of other distros including Debian.
• rockhazard (Discord)
  • MS will *drop* development of Edge for Linux. (a man can hope)
• Sundaram (Telegram)
  • Proton/Wine will support EAC
  • Matrix users will skyrocket.
  • Linux will run on Apple M1.
  • Lots and lots of ARM devices.
  • RISC-V will grow a lot.
  • Nvidia will open source its drivers. (Lol)
  • Due to the release of many cloud gaming platforms fragmentation will occur (also timed exclusives will be more common).
• J Arun Mani (Telegram)
  • Microsoft will expand its poison net: WSL, VSCode and many things that will prevent users from really moving to Linux
  • Adobe will continue to call Linux a modest platform
  • Emacs will become more modern and beginner friendly.
• Dave Goldsbrough (Twitter)
  • (More of a wish!) Accessibility will be much better in Linux.
• Joussef Jouda 
  • No innovative changes in Linux in 2021

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

• Clay Stone
• From Alex
• Brad Alexander
• Avinash

CHECK THIS OUT! 

• Tony H
  • Mince meat and mince pies – Recipe to make your own Mincemeat 
  • HPR New year marathon show, starts 10.00 UTC 31st December 2020 – ends 12.00 UTC 1st Jan 2021 
• Joe
  • Greg Doucette YouTube channel
• Erik
  • Grsync – GUI for rsync http://www.opbyte.it/grsync/
  • Super Productivity – task management, to-do, and time tracking https://super-productivity.com/

Announcements:

• Our next show will be Sunday, January 10, at 2:00pm Central US Time.
• Get the showtime converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

• Joe – www.Tllts.org,  www.linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, jb@mintcast.org 
• Bo – undercastnetwork.com , YouTube Undercast Collective
• Moss – Peaceful Hippo, It’s Moss, MeWe, @bardictriad on Twitter, blogs on Peaceful Hippo, LinuxQuestions.org, and Dreamwidth, music on Bandcamp and my YouTube channel or Robert Warren’s channel, moss@mintcast.org, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com, Sponsus!!
• Tony Hughes – HPR –  http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=338, Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/, Twitter @TonyH1212, th@mintcast.org, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com 
• Tony Watts – tw@mintcast.org, Echoes of Savages (band)
• Josh Hawk – joshontech@protonmail.com, @joshontech on Twitter and most other social sites.
• Leo – leochavez.org and @leochavez on Twitter, leo@mintcast.org, linuxuserspace.show and you can get your five minute news digest at Full Circle Weekly News 

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!>

LINUX INNARDS:

• My Docker transmission/chrome setup stopped working but I think this time it was because of the changes in openvpn.  I tested the ovpn file outside docker and it worked just fine.  But when I logged in to the docker session and ran the same file it threw an error and did not work.  
• I had to go through several different iterations of installing virtualBox in order to get it to work.  I started with the base install from the mint repos.  But it did not work, I did a purge and added the repo for virtualBox and tried both 6.0 and 6.1 but neither seemed to work and would throw an error in regards to drivers.
• Even after I remembered that this was a new motherboard and went in and turned on virtualization.  Then I did another purge and installed the main version of virtualBox and everything worked
• Then I installed the MATE version of Mint with 2gb of RAM and 32gb of starting HDD space to be allocated dynamically.
• Then I setup a shared folder between the host and the VM which has some issues that I will get to shortly
• After that I made sure that the applications I needed were installed.  These applications are transmission-daemon, transmission-rss, openvpn and iptables
• Transmission-daemon I had to make run as my user which was as easy as modifying the systemd setup and telling it to run as me
• Transmission-rss is an application for which you run a simple command that checks a config file and then checks the rss feeds that I have given it.  Grabs the torrent files and then feeds them into transmission which then downloads the files
  • But because I installed the newest version of Ruby it is having trouble reading everything from the config files.  This should be easily fixed by reverting to an older version of Ruby but what it amounts to is the fact that ruby sees the config file differently.
  • I set up transmission rss to run as a cron job that goes off every ten minutes.  This can also be setup as a service that runs continually although I think that eats some resources for no reason
• The next thing that I set up was openvpn as a system service. 
  • I used https://support.vpnsecure.me/articles/getting-started/linux-autostart-openvpn-in-systemd-ubuntu as a starting point to get things going
  • sudo nano /etc/default/openvpn
    • And uncomment autostart all
  • Copy the config file to /etc/openvpn/client.conf
  • Modify the config file to look for a password file
  • Create the user pass file and set the permissions to 400
  • sudo systemctl enable openvpn@client.service
  • sudo systemctl daemon-reload
  • sudo service openvpn@client start
• Then I needed to limit the traffic so that it would only go through the openvpn connection.  That was why I changed the user earlier on transmission to the main user instead of root.  So that the traffic is always limited.
• This requires the use of iptables.  I generated a script based off some commands that I found on the interwebs, I would include the link here but I cannot find it again

#!/bin/bash

# Set our rules so the debian-transmission user group can only route through the vpn

NET=10.0.0.0/8

GROUP=USER

IFACE_INTERNAL=eth0

IFACE_VPN=tun0

ALLOW_PORT_FROM_LOCAL=9091

iptables -A OUTPUT -d $NET -p tcp --sport $ALLOW_PORT_FROM_LOCAL -m owner --gid-owner $GROUP -o $IFACE_INTERNAL -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -d $NET -p udp --sport $ALLOW_PORT_FROM_LOCAL -m owner --gid-owner $GROUP -o $IFACE_INTERNAL -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -m owner --gid-owner $GROUP -o $IFACE_VPN -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -m owner --gid-owner $GROUP -o lo -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -m owner --gid-owner $GROUP -j REJECT

# not needed - but added these to properly track data to these interfaces....when using iptables -L -v

iptables -A INPUT -i $IFACE_VPN -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -i $IFACE_INTERNAL -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT

# track any forward (NAT) data for completeness - don't care about interfaces

iptables -A FORWARD

• I have included the script here but what it does is limit all traffic from the USER group to go through tun0 which is the VPN.  It also limits local traffic to eth0 but since there is no eth0 it blocks local traffic for that user
• The next thing to do is restart the VM to test that everything is working as it should.
• After the restart the first thing to do is check your ip address either from the command line with something like curl ipinfo.io or with your web browser.
• If the ip address is different from the one outside of the vm then you know that most everything is working.  Next thing is to kill the openvpn service and check again sudo systemctl stop openvpn and then try to load a webpage.  Nothing should come up
• Restart the vpn sudo systemctl start openvpn.  Check your transmission page.  Check that you can download a torrent and that it will start.

• Things that need to be fixed:
  • Transmission starts before the location is mounted which throws some errors that are easily fixed by restarting transmission
    • This may be fixable by forcing transmission to start later or by converting to an sshfs mount that goes through my dns service and having that setup as a systemd service that runs before transmission
  • The RSS feature for some reason (Ruby, I need to install an older version) doesn’t automatically move finished files to the proper location so that it can be moved to another location and picked up by plex. It also no longer uses the regex I have set up so that it will only download the versions that I want of whatever I am downloading.  It gets everything from the feed
  • Also need to set the vmbox to start up automatically at reboot
  • Even though I limited the amount of RAM to 2Gb I am now maxing out 16Gb of RAM so I am going to order more but I think this is more a recent issue with chrome eating memory again as I have seen the issue on another machine without this set up 
• There are other ways that I could set this up instead of inside a virtual machine that would probably be easier 
  • Instead of a VM I could use a dedicated machine.  This would get rid of the mount timing issues that I have but would make the later transfer of files possibly problematic.  Pretty sure I could even do this with a Pi and that may be my next project although space may be an issue and I will still need to work out the kinks with Ruby
  • I could set up a router with a dedicated VPN and then have a machine that is only connected through that but that requires 2 dedicated devices and while is probably a much easier set up I would worry about ip leaks.  Also that would meant that when I wanted to use a vpn version of chrome I would either need an extension or a different set up on all my boxes
  • Last but not least and one that I will be visiting in the near future.  I could knuckle down and learn docker compose and fix these docker images myself

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

• Jim Daldry
• Nick
• LinuxLuva114

CHECK THIS OUT! 

• Leo
  • curl ipinfo.io
• Tony H   
• Moss
  • The death of Sabayon OS has resulted in the birth of Mocaccino OS. No ISO yet but it looks amazing, available in Gentoo and LFS versions. Devs say that, when finished, you can upgrade from Sabayon directly to Mocaccino.
  • If you’re looking for other places to talk Linux, here you go: https://fosspost.org/open-source-linux-communities/
• Josh
• Joe
  • Big Aussie Prepper 
    • https://feeds.redcircle.com/1d1dabbe-e9de-4c66-94f8-e428d93e5da7 
  • http://hackerpublicradio.org/ 

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:

• Joe – www.Tllts.org,  www.linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, jb@mintcast.org 
• Bo – undercastnetwork.com , YouTube Undercast Collective
• Moss – Peaceful Hippo, It’s Moss, MeWe, @bardictriad on Twitter, blogs on Peaceful Hippo, LinuxQuestions.org, and Dreamwidth, music on Bandcamp and my YouTube channel or Robert Warren’s channel, moss@mintcast.org, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com, Sponsus!!
• Tony Hughes – HPR –  http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=338, Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/, Twitter @TonyH1212, th@mintcast.org, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com 
• Tony Watts – tw@mintcast.org, Echoes of Savages (band)
• Josh Hawk – joshontech@protonmail.com, @joshontech on Twitter and most other social sites.
• Leo – leochavez.org and @leochavez on Twitter, leo@mintcast.org, linuxuserspace.show and you can get your five minute news digest at Full Circle Weekly News 

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!>

LINUX INNARDS:

• My Docker transmission/chrome setup stopped working but I think this time it was because of the changes in openvpn.  I tested the ovpn file outside docker and it worked just fine.  But when I logged in to the docker session and ran the same file it threw an error and did not work.  
• I had to go through several different iterations of installing virtualBox in order to get it to work.  I started with the base install from the mint repos.  But it did not work, I did a purge and added the repo for virtualBox and tried both 6.0 and 6.1 but neither seemed to work and would throw an error in regards to drivers.
• Even after I remembered that this was a new motherboard and went in and turned on virtualization.  Then I did another purge and installed the main version of virtualBox and everything worked
• Then I installed the MATE version of Mint with 2gb of RAM and 32gb of starting HDD space to be allocated dynamically.
• Then I setup a shared folder between the host and the VM which has some issues that I will get to shortly
• After that I made sure that the applications I needed were installed.  These applications are transmission-daemon, transmission-rss, openvpn and iptables
• Transmission-daemon I had to make run as my user which was as easy as modifying the systemd setup and telling it to run as me
• Transmission-rss is an application for which you run a simple command that checks a config file and then checks the rss feeds that I have given it.  Grabs the torrent files and then feeds them into transmission which then downloads the files
  • But because I installed the newest version of Ruby it is having trouble reading everything from the config files.  This should be easily fixed by reverting to an older version of Ruby but what it amounts to is the fact that ruby sees the config file differently.
  • I set up transmission rss to run as a cron job that goes off every ten minutes.  This can also be setup as a service that runs continually although I think that eats some resources for no reason
• The next thing that I set up was openvpn as a system service. 
  • I used https://support.vpnsecure.me/articles/getting-started/linux-autostart-openvpn-in-systemd-ubuntu as a starting point to get things going
  • sudo nano /etc/default/openvpn
    • And uncomment autostart all
  • Copy the config file to /etc/openvpn/client.conf
  • Modify the config file to look for a password file
  • Create the user pass file and set the permissions to 400
  • sudo systemctl enable openvpn@client.service
  • sudo systemctl daemon-reload
  • sudo service openvpn@client start
• Then I needed to limit the traffic so that it would only go through the openvpn connection.  That was why I changed the user earlier on transmission to the main user instead of root.  So that the traffic is always limited.
• This requires the use of iptables.  I generated a script based off some commands that I found on the interwebs, I would include the link here but I cannot find it again

#!/bin/bash

# Set our rules so the debian-transmission user group can only route through the vpn

NET=10.0.0.0/8

GROUP=USER

IFACE_INTERNAL=eth0

IFACE_VPN=tun0

ALLOW_PORT_FROM_LOCAL=9091

iptables -A OUTPUT -d $NET -p tcp --sport $ALLOW_PORT_FROM_LOCAL -m owner --gid-owner $GROUP -o $IFACE_INTERNAL -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -d $NET -p udp --sport $ALLOW_PORT_FROM_LOCAL -m owner --gid-owner $GROUP -o $IFACE_INTERNAL -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -m owner --gid-owner $GROUP -o $IFACE_VPN -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -m owner --gid-owner $GROUP -o lo -j ACCEPT

iptables -A OUTPUT -m owner --gid-owner $GROUP -j REJECT

# not needed - but added these to properly track data to these interfaces....when using iptables -L -v

iptables -A INPUT -i $IFACE_VPN -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -i $IFACE_INTERNAL -j ACCEPT

iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT

# track any forward (NAT) data for completeness - don't care about interfaces

iptables -A FORWARD

• I have included the script here but what it does is limit all traffic from the USER group to go through tun0 which is the VPN.  It also limits local traffic to eth0 but since there is no eth0 it blocks local traffic for that user
• The next thing to do is restart the VM to test that everything is working as it should.
• After the restart the first thing to do is check your ip address either from the command line with something like curl ipinfo.io or with your web browser.
• If the ip address is different from the one outside of the vm then you know that most everything is working.  Next thing is to kill the openvpn service and check again sudo systemctl stop openvpn and then try to load a webpage.  Nothing should come up
• Restart the vpn sudo systemctl start openvpn.  Check your transmission page.  Check that you can download a torrent and that it will start.

• Things that need to be fixed:
  • Transmission starts before the location is mounted which throws some errors that are easily fixed by restarting transmission
    • This may be fixable by forcing transmission to start later or by converting to an sshfs mount that goes through my dns service and having that setup as a systemd service that runs before transmission
  • The RSS feature for some reason (Ruby, I need to install an older version) doesn’t automatically move finished files to the proper location so that it can be moved to another location and picked up by plex. It also no longer uses the regex I have set up so that it will only download the versions that I want of whatever I am downloading.  It gets everything from the feed
  • Also need to set the vmbox to start up automatically at reboot
  • Even though I limited the amount of RAM to 2Gb I am now maxing out 16Gb of RAM so I am going to order more but I think this is more a recent issue with chrome eating memory again as I have seen the issue on another machine without this set up 
• There are other ways that I could set this up instead of inside a virtual machine that would probably be easier 
  • Instead of a VM I could use a dedicated machine.  This would get rid of the mount timing issues that I have but would make the later transfer of files possibly problematic.  Pretty sure I could even do this with a Pi and that may be my next project although space may be an issue and I will still need to work out the kinks with Ruby
  • I could set up a router with a dedicated VPN and then have a machine that is only connected through that but that requires 2 dedicated devices and while is probably a much easier set up I would worry about ip leaks.  Also that would meant that when I wanted to use a vpn version of chrome I would either need an extension or a different set up on all my boxes
  • Last but not least and one that I will be visiting in the near future.  I could knuckle down and learn docker compose and fix these docker images myself

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

• Jim Daldry
• Nick
• LinuxLuva114

CHECK THIS OUT! 

• Leo
  • curl ipinfo.io
• Tony H   
• Moss
  • The death of Sabayon OS has resulted in the birth of Mocaccino OS. No ISO yet but it looks amazing, available in Gentoo and LFS versions. Devs say that, when finished, you can upgrade from Sabayon directly to Mocaccino.
  • If you’re looking for other places to talk Linux, here you go: https://fosspost.org/open-source-linux-communities/
• Josh
• Joe
  • Big Aussie Prepper 
    • https://feeds.redcircle.com/1d1dabbe-e9de-4c66-94f8-e428d93e5da7 
  • http://hackerpublicradio.org/ 

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:

• Joe – www.Tllts.org,  www.linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, jb@mintcast.org 
• Bo – undercastnetwork.com , YouTube Undercast Collective
• Moss – Peaceful Hippo, It’s Moss, MeWe, @bardictriad on Twitter, blogs on Peaceful Hippo, LinuxQuestions.org, and Dreamwidth, music on Bandcamp and my YouTube channel or Robert Warren’s channel, moss@mintcast.org, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com, Sponsus!!
• Tony Hughes – HPR –  http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=338, Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/, Twitter @TonyH1212, th@mintcast.org, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com 
• Tony Watts – tw@mintcast.org, Echoes of Savages (band)
• Josh Hawk – joshontech@protonmail.com, @joshontech on Twitter and most other social sites.
• Leo – leochavez.org and @leochavez on Twitter, leo@mintcast.org, linuxuserspace.show and you can get your five minute news digest at Full Circle Weekly News 

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!>

Download

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

• Owen
  • Continue to refurbish donated computers with older hardware, add RAM and SSDs, install Mint 19.3, and deliver them to families in need at my school
  • Won an Innovative Teacher award from the Fab Foundation and Chevron for this project which also came with a $1000 cash award, which also allowed me to purchase more/better RAM and SSDs
  • 3d printing PPE like face shields and ear savers
  • Ordered 2 new 3d printers via a Kickstarter campaign, one for me, one for school
  • Test driving Mint 20.04 beta after finally separating my /home directory and OS into different partitions, and a few days of being really lost in the weeds, but I had a backup so I knew it would all be OK
  • Attended a virtual STEM conference in June called Inclusive STEM and CS
  • Been learning how to use Kdenlive by using an action camera on top of my helmet and going on different bike rides each day
  • Slowly working on installing motioneyeOS on a Raspberry Pi with one of the new fancy cameras to setup a security camera due to a recent arson at my condo complex
  • Exploring Ubuntu Studio and am almost certain my main machine at home will to to Ubuntu Studio for 20.10 when it’ll be Plasma by default
  • Setup a Ventoy USB stick and started installing all.the.ISOs.in.the.world.
  • Working my way through a lynda.com course on Bash scripting to get better using the command line
  • Staying sane during shelter in place by taking a bicycle ride everyday, not new since I”m a bike commuter for almost 2 decades now, having a standing Sunday morning Zoom call with friends from around the world, walking my dog further than before and more frequently, using the kids playground at the school next to my home to work out on, and trying to think each day of at least one thing I”m grateful for.
  • Gardening, community garden, gardening on our terrace, and gardening in the front of our building
• Leo
  • Upgraded to Linux Mint 20 on the laptop I’m recording on!
  • Still need to do the desktop, but have a few things going on this weekend, so I may not make it.
  • I’m on a new show! Linux User Space
• Tony H
  • Baking and playing with my model cars, I also won a few eBay auctions of some nice models to go straight into the collection. Today I spent the afternoon with my sister and her husband as it was their 1st wedding anniversary and I restored a little matchbox Rolls Royce model and painted it up as a wedding saloon which they missed out on as they got married on a cruise ship last summer. My sister is into bead jewelry making so I thought something a little crafty would be appreciated, and they both loved it, so my model restoration hobby has a new fan. 
  • I’ve recently been recording a series of episodes for HPR about my diecast model restorations and I have been having problems with Firefox not letting me reserve a slot in the HPR schedule to upload the show too. It returns an error message. However If I use Chromium to book the slot, not a problem, I can then go back into Firefox and do the remainder of the process from there. It used to work just fine, I’m wondering if my ad blocking plugins might be the issue?  
  • The big story for me this week is, since the last show I purchased a new colour Laser printer, the HP Color Laser 150nw, so I can produce high quality decals for my models that require them. I bought this printer as I was led to believe that it had Linux support. I set it up, downloaded the HP driver package HPLIP from the Developers page which is a more up to date version than that in Mint 19.3, and I thought great, we are good to go. No this did not recognise that the printer was present even after restarting the printer several times with the USB cable attached to the PC. So I went into CUPS which prior to installation of the HPLIP package had not had any idea what this HP printer was, it now recognised it was there and came up with the model and a recommended driver which I installed. I tried a test print the light on the printer starts to flash but apart from a little noise from it as the paper feed whirls around nothing else happens. Several attempts later I started to suspect I had a faulty printer, but I had one last option before I gave up. Here’s where I have to say the dreaded ‘Windows word’ I got out my Dell 7250 laptop that has W10 installed as a test machine for troubleshooting windows issues for other folk, I plugged in the printer and it picked it up right away and started to install the driver, after installing I printed the test page and it worked. In one way I was relieved as my $160 / £130 I spent for the printer is not wasted but I’m more than a little disgruntled that I have to have a Windows laptop to drive the thing instead of just working on my Mint 19.3 box like it should!!!! I then had an idea and booted into Ubuntu Studio 20.04 and it picked the printer up without the addition of any other software so the moral of the story is run the latest OS you can if you want your printer to be supported in Linux.
• Moss
  • Distrohoppers’ Digest 014 is out. We’d love to have everyone listen to it. Tony and I have a great time doing this little monthly hop.
  • Sometime after the last show was in the can but before we did Distrohoppers’ Digest, I accessed my two machines and did what can only be called Adventures In GPartEd. My desktop box went from 2 partitions to 3, and my laptop went from 3 to 4, complete with cleaning up unnecessary partitions and moving things around so much that if GPartEd *were* dangerous to use, I would have lost lots of data. It is of interest to note my desktop’s hard drive somehow had both EFI and Grub partitions; I removed and reallocated the latter, and also increased the size of my swap partition. Everything works. I’m waiting for all the distros which have been promised, including a new openSUSE, and Slackware 15.
  • Over the past couple days, I have been trying the new Mint 20 on the laptop. I overwrote the Manjaro partition… I tried Cinnamon, but found something mildly upsetting in yesterday’s show meeting and installed MATE instead, then had a couple minor catastrophes causing me to reinstall MATE… TWICE… so I was up all night again. When I get Mint 20 up to the level I need for working, probably today or tomorrow, I will reinstall Manjaro over the Mint 19.3 partition… and will lose the GRUB niceties of 19.3, which were removed in 20 because they caused some machines to not boot. I guess I can make OpenMandriva the Grubholder then, so I can still have a pretty boot menu.  For the record, my memory use in 20 Cinnamon was 1.7 Gb at rest, where in MATE it’s about 770 Mb. Both of those are high for these desktops, but I assume they will work on getting it down soon.
  • I am making an effort to use Bodhi for more of my daily stuff, rather than treating it like a fun curiosity. It is interesting to learn what stuff goes where in a superlight desktop, very different from what I’ve been used to in heavier desktops like XFCE. For instance, I created Key Bindings to turn my touchpad on and off. What I mean by “superlight”: Stacer reports 324 Mb in use with only Stacer open, and 14 Mb of that is Stacer itself. We usually call a desktop “light” if it has 550-700 Mb in use at rest.
  • I still don’t have a distro to review for next Distrohoppers’, but Mint should be out soon. I already have downloaded what should be the final, but they haven’t announced it yet.
  • I bought a new tablet, a Hyundai Technologies Koral 10×3. I was trying to order a PineTab but my wife blocked the purchase. It turns out she thought I was just trying to order another Raspberry Pi, and then, when she approved me buying it, it was sold out. Then a friend told me about her tablet, and I got excited and bought one… I probably jumped at it too quickly, and I do have a bit of buyers’ remorse, having read a few more reviews, but I’ll wait until it arrives before I bad-mouth it… or talk it up…
  • I’ve been running around with all this extra Covid money from Congress, getting  clothes and bedsheets and all the things we have absolutely needed but couldn’t afford, and spending out of pocket for my wife’s health care, which we previously had no money for and still can’t get insurance for. Also due to the Covid money, we are not currently eligible for the various low-income healthcare programs. I’m  cleaning up debt, most of which was caused by importing my wife from Canada — all the money the government and lawyers need for that to happen. Everything’s done except the debt reduction program I’m in, which will be over in less than a year. But all this good money is scheduled to end July 31, which will mean a $540 per week dropoff, and there are no legal jobs in sight.  I can’t even work in my previous employment, as I’m more of a driver risk, have a still-injured shoulder, and otherwise I’m still 67 years old. This is the first time in my life I haven’t been stuck at around 140% of poverty level, and it’s ending in 33 days.
  • As I haven’t been sleeping in bed since the accident, our Dresden Files reading has dropped off, but we’re pretty deep in the 5th book right now.
  • Enough of this. Let’s get to Joe.
• Joe
  • Attended a virtual LUG
    • It was interesting
    • It was nice to get to see all the people that I normally hang out with at the LUG even if it was over Zoom
    • Got to help a bunch of people and learn a couple of things about top and htop
  • Jim Butcher Codex Alera
    • Good series.  The last book is the weakest but still a really good conclusion
    • Remember the new book comes out next month for the Dresden Files
      • The first few chapters are available online although i have not read them as i would rather wait for the whole book
  • Larry Correia 
    • Grimnoir
      • Trilogy with some short stories attached.
      • Alternate history book post WW2
    • Monster Hunter
      • Really good series that I keep going back to
    • Saga of the Forgotten Warrior
      • Only two books in the series so far but I am liking it
  • Book 14 of the Nate Temple series.  
    • I thought the series was starting to lag but it seems to be picking up again.  Really good book
  • Decided that if i am going to use the Pi as an sshfs gateway then I should make the internet connection a bit more stable.  The Powerline ethernet adapter that I use doesn’t provide much speed and has many drops.  I could possibly code my way around that being a major issue but I would like more reliability.  I have a few wifi adapters that i could try out but my set top box in the garage has a solid connection and good speeds on 5 GHz so i am going to use internet sharing on that to a network switch.  https://www.tecmint.com/share-internet-in-linux/
    • Also found out that the if up and if down folders do not work so i tried dhclient-enter-hooks.d
    • Which i have not been able to get to work so far
    • Trying out systemctl which i am seeing a response from using the simple statements that i was using before.  I am able to keep that service running +with an extremely simple while loop but it currently lacks flexibility on failures so i will need to write some loops that are dependant on the response from pings
  • I was able to print a mount for my 7130 that allows me to keep it directly under the monitor that I use for work.  This allows me to watch fix it videos during the slow times or when i am doing something routine.  As well as do things like type up my bi-weekly wanderings during my breaks.
• Bo
  • ESO on stadia
    • PC and Steam accounts
    • Performance

THE NEWS: 

• Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon Released! 
  • Release Notes
  • What’s new
  • Also MATE
  • Also XFCE
  • Fixing snaps
    • sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref
  • Fixing Chromium
    • There are about four different ways to get Chromium outside of the snap store. None of them are official Linux Mint packages.
• Linux Mint Monthly News 
  • Taking the next two weeks to work on upgrade path from 19.3 and porting new features to LMDE4
  • The new Mint-Y colors were postponed until Linux Mint 20.1
  • The change which made the Grub menu always visible was reverted, and the Grub theme, which in this release prevented Linux Mint 20 to boot on particular laptops was removed.
  • There is a new User Guide!
  • LM received a total of $14,879 from 747 donors in May!
• Defender ATP Out for Linux — Just not for your desktop
• Dell XPS 13 Now Available with Ubuntu 20.04

SECURITY UPDATE

•  Ripple20 Is a Pack of Almost 20 Bugs Affecting Millions of Devices
  • Specifically, it’s pinned to a service called Treck with DNS support
  • The bugs can cause Denial of Service all the way up to Remote Code Execution
  • Affected devices can be just about anything since this is a supply chain flaw.
    • Essentially, a vulnerable piece of software is made available by, in this case Treck, and it is then taken by manufacturers and used in TONS of devices to add additional functionality without having to write code themselves.
    • Printers, Uninterruptible Power Supplies, Smart home thingies like thermostats and light bulbs. This library is truly pervasive.
  • Update your Treck libraries to 6.0.1.67 and all is well for every bug that’s part of Ripple20.
  • Easy right? Well, no, actually. When’s the last time you updated your smart light bulb? Your UPS? This problem will be with us for years. How many people do you think will hear these advisories? It’s been out for almost two weeks at the time of this recording.
  • Folks, it really is time to ask yourself if it’s worth having someone know everything about you, or take control of your network in exchange for being able to shut off a light from two rooms away.
  • NanoLeaf light panels, the app allows you to download other people’s light patterns and put them on

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 12th of July at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

• Owen Peery – peeryo@sfusd.edu Twitter @owenpeery
• Joe – www.Tllts.org  linuxlugcast.com MeWe jb@mintcast.org 
• Bo – undercastnetwork.com
• Moss – Triad Bardic College, Peaceful Hippo, MeWe, music on Bandcamp and Moss Bliss’ YouTube channel or Robert Warren’s channel, I should have my ReverbNation site back soon, moss@mintcast.org, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com, Sponsus (Now with Tiers, and a Donate Button!)!
• Tony Hughes – HPR –  http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=338 Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/ Twitter @TonyH1212, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com th@mintcast.org   
• Tony Watts – tw@mintcast.org, Echoes of Savages (band)
• Josh – josh@mintcast.org, josh@edublocks.org, edublocks.org and @all_about_code on Twitter
• Leo – leochavez.org and @leochavez on Twitter, and you can get your five minute news digest at Full Circle Weekly News

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.

Download

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

• Owen
  • Continue to refurbish donated computers with older hardware, add RAM and SSDs, install Mint 19.3, and deliver them to families in need at my school
  • Won an Innovative Teacher award from the Fab Foundation and Chevron for this project which also came with a $1000 cash award, which also allowed me to purchase more/better RAM and SSDs
  • 3d printing PPE like face shields and ear savers
  • Ordered 2 new 3d printers via a Kickstarter campaign, one for me, one for school
  • Test driving Mint 20.04 beta after finally separating my /home directory and OS into different partitions, and a few days of being really lost in the weeds, but I had a backup so I knew it would all be OK
  • Attended a virtual STEM conference in June called Inclusive STEM and CS
  • Been learning how to use Kdenlive by using an action camera on top of my helmet and going on different bike rides each day
  • Slowly working on installing motioneyeOS on a Raspberry Pi with one of the new fancy cameras to setup a security camera due to a recent arson at my condo complex
  • Exploring Ubuntu Studio and am almost certain my main machine at home will to to Ubuntu Studio for 20.10 when it’ll be Plasma by default
  • Setup a Ventoy USB stick and started installing all.the.ISOs.in.the.world.
  • Working my way through a lynda.com course on Bash scripting to get better using the command line
  • Staying sane during shelter in place by taking a bicycle ride everyday, not new since I”m a bike commuter for almost 2 decades now, having a standing Sunday morning Zoom call with friends from around the world, walking my dog further than before and more frequently, using the kids playground at the school next to my home to work out on, and trying to think each day of at least one thing I”m grateful for.
  • Gardening, community garden, gardening on our terrace, and gardening in the front of our building
• Leo
  • Upgraded to Linux Mint 20 on the laptop I’m recording on!
  • Still need to do the desktop, but have a few things going on this weekend, so I may not make it.
  • I’m on a new show! Linux User Space
• Tony H
  • Baking and playing with my model cars, I also won a few eBay auctions of some nice models to go straight into the collection. Today I spent the afternoon with my sister and her husband as it was their 1st wedding anniversary and I restored a little matchbox Rolls Royce model and painted it up as a wedding saloon which they missed out on as they got married on a cruise ship last summer. My sister is into bead jewelry making so I thought something a little crafty would be appreciated, and they both loved it, so my model restoration hobby has a new fan. 
  • I’ve recently been recording a series of episodes for HPR about my diecast model restorations and I have been having problems with Firefox not letting me reserve a slot in the HPR schedule to upload the show too. It returns an error message. However If I use Chromium to book the slot, not a problem, I can then go back into Firefox and do the remainder of the process from there. It used to work just fine, I’m wondering if my ad blocking plugins might be the issue?  
  • The big story for me this week is, since the last show I purchased a new colour Laser printer, the HP Color Laser 150nw, so I can produce high quality decals for my models that require them. I bought this printer as I was led to believe that it had Linux support. I set it up, downloaded the HP driver package HPLIP from the Developers page which is a more up to date version than that in Mint 19.3, and I thought great, we are good to go. No this did not recognise that the printer was present even after restarting the printer several times with the USB cable attached to the PC. So I went into CUPS which prior to installation of the HPLIP package had not had any idea what this HP printer was, it now recognised it was there and came up with the model and a recommended driver which I installed. I tried a test print the light on the printer starts to flash but apart from a little noise from it as the paper feed whirls around nothing else happens. Several attempts later I started to suspect I had a faulty printer, but I had one last option before I gave up. Here’s where I have to say the dreaded ‘Windows word’ I got out my Dell 7250 laptop that has W10 installed as a test machine for troubleshooting windows issues for other folk, I plugged in the printer and it picked it up right away and started to install the driver, after installing I printed the test page and it worked. In one way I was relieved as my $160 / £130 I spent for the printer is not wasted but I’m more than a little disgruntled that I have to have a Windows laptop to drive the thing instead of just working on my Mint 19.3 box like it should!!!! I then had an idea and booted into Ubuntu Studio 20.04 and it picked the printer up without the addition of any other software so the moral of the story is run the latest OS you can if you want your printer to be supported in Linux.
• Moss
  • Distrohoppers’ Digest 014 is out. We’d love to have everyone listen to it. Tony and I have a great time doing this little monthly hop.
  • Sometime after the last show was in the can but before we did Distrohoppers’ Digest, I accessed my two machines and did what can only be called Adventures In GPartEd. My desktop box went from 2 partitions to 3, and my laptop went from 3 to 4, complete with cleaning up unnecessary partitions and moving things around so much that if GPartEd *were* dangerous to use, I would have lost lots of data. It is of interest to note my desktop’s hard drive somehow had both EFI and Grub partitions; I removed and reallocated the latter, and also increased the size of my swap partition. Everything works. I’m waiting for all the distros which have been promised, including a new openSUSE, and Slackware 15.
  • Over the past couple days, I have been trying the new Mint 20 on the laptop. I overwrote the Manjaro partition… I tried Cinnamon, but found something mildly upsetting in yesterday’s show meeting and installed MATE instead, then had a couple minor catastrophes causing me to reinstall MATE… TWICE… so I was up all night again. When I get Mint 20 up to the level I need for working, probably today or tomorrow, I will reinstall Manjaro over the Mint 19.3 partition… and will lose the GRUB niceties of 19.3, which were removed in 20 because they caused some machines to not boot. I guess I can make OpenMandriva the Grubholder then, so I can still have a pretty boot menu.  For the record, my memory use in 20 Cinnamon was 1.7 Gb at rest, where in MATE it’s about 770 Mb. Both of those are high for these desktops, but I assume they will work on getting it down soon.
  • I am making an effort to use Bodhi for more of my daily stuff, rather than treating it like a fun curiosity. It is interesting to learn what stuff goes where in a superlight desktop, very different from what I’ve been used to in heavier desktops like XFCE. For instance, I created Key Bindings to turn my touchpad on and off. What I mean by “superlight”: Stacer reports 324 Mb in use with only Stacer open, and 14 Mb of that is Stacer itself. We usually call a desktop “light” if it has 550-700 Mb in use at rest.
  • I still don’t have a distro to review for next Distrohoppers’, but Mint should be out soon. I already have downloaded what should be the final, but they haven’t announced it yet.
  • I bought a new tablet, a Hyundai Technologies Koral 10×3. I was trying to order a PineTab but my wife blocked the purchase. It turns out she thought I was just trying to order another Raspberry Pi, and then, when she approved me buying it, it was sold out. Then a friend told me about her tablet, and I got excited and bought one… I probably jumped at it too quickly, and I do have a bit of buyers’ remorse, having read a few more reviews, but I’ll wait until it arrives before I bad-mouth it… or talk it up…
  • I’ve been running around with all this extra Covid money from Congress, getting  clothes and bedsheets and all the things we have absolutely needed but couldn’t afford, and spending out of pocket for my wife’s health care, which we previously had no money for and still can’t get insurance for. Also due to the Covid money, we are not currently eligible for the various low-income healthcare programs. I’m  cleaning up debt, most of which was caused by importing my wife from Canada — all the money the government and lawyers need for that to happen. Everything’s done except the debt reduction program I’m in, which will be over in less than a year. But all this good money is scheduled to end July 31, which will mean a $540 per week dropoff, and there are no legal jobs in sight.  I can’t even work in my previous employment, as I’m more of a driver risk, have a still-injured shoulder, and otherwise I’m still 67 years old. This is the first time in my life I haven’t been stuck at around 140% of poverty level, and it’s ending in 33 days.
  • As I haven’t been sleeping in bed since the accident, our Dresden Files reading has dropped off, but we’re pretty deep in the 5th book right now.
  • Enough of this. Let’s get to Joe.
• Joe
  • Attended a virtual LUG
    • It was interesting
    • It was nice to get to see all the people that I normally hang out with at the LUG even if it was over Zoom
    • Got to help a bunch of people and learn a couple of things about top and htop
  • Jim Butcher Codex Alera
    • Good series.  The last book is the weakest but still a really good conclusion
    • Remember the new book comes out next month for the Dresden Files
      • The first few chapters are available online although i have not read them as i would rather wait for the whole book
  • Larry Correia 
    • Grimnoir
      • Trilogy with some short stories attached.
      • Alternate history book post WW2
    • Monster Hunter
      • Really good series that I keep going back to
    • Saga of the Forgotten Warrior
      • Only two books in the series so far but I am liking it
  • Book 14 of the Nate Temple series.  
    • I thought the series was starting to lag but it seems to be picking up again.  Really good book
  • Decided that if i am going to use the Pi as an sshfs gateway then I should make the internet connection a bit more stable.  The Powerline ethernet adapter that I use doesn’t provide much speed and has many drops.  I could possibly code my way around that being a major issue but I would like more reliability.  I have a few wifi adapters that i could try out but my set top box in the garage has a solid connection and good speeds on 5 GHz so i am going to use internet sharing on that to a network switch.  https://www.tecmint.com/share-internet-in-linux/
    • Also found out that the if up and if down folders do not work so i tried dhclient-enter-hooks.d
    • Which i have not been able to get to work so far
    • Trying out systemctl which i am seeing a response from using the simple statements that i was using before.  I am able to keep that service running +with an extremely simple while loop but it currently lacks flexibility on failures so i will need to write some loops that are dependant on the response from pings
  • I was able to print a mount for my 7130 that allows me to keep it directly under the monitor that I use for work.  This allows me to watch fix it videos during the slow times or when i am doing something routine.  As well as do things like type up my bi-weekly wanderings during my breaks.
• Bo
  • ESO on stadia
    • PC and Steam accounts
    • Performance

THE NEWS: 

• Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon Released! 
  • Release Notes
  • What’s new
  • Also MATE
  • Also XFCE
  • Fixing snaps
    • sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref
  • Fixing Chromium
    • There are about four different ways to get Chromium outside of the snap store. None of them are official Linux Mint packages.
• Linux Mint Monthly News 
  • Taking the next two weeks to work on upgrade path from 19.3 and porting new features to LMDE4
  • The new Mint-Y colors were postponed until Linux Mint 20.1
  • The change which made the Grub menu always visible was reverted, and the Grub theme, which in this release prevented Linux Mint 20 to boot on particular laptops was removed.
  • There is a new User Guide!
  • LM received a total of $14,879 from 747 donors in May!
• Defender ATP Out for Linux — Just not for your desktop
• Dell XPS 13 Now Available with Ubuntu 20.04

SECURITY UPDATE

•  Ripple20 Is a Pack of Almost 20 Bugs Affecting Millions of Devices
  • Specifically, it’s pinned to a service called Treck with DNS support
  • The bugs can cause Denial of Service all the way up to Remote Code Execution
  • Affected devices can be just about anything since this is a supply chain flaw.
    • Essentially, a vulnerable piece of software is made available by, in this case Treck, and it is then taken by manufacturers and used in TONS of devices to add additional functionality without having to write code themselves.
    • Printers, Uninterruptible Power Supplies, Smart home thingies like thermostats and light bulbs. This library is truly pervasive.
  • Update your Treck libraries to 6.0.1.67 and all is well for every bug that’s part of Ripple20.
  • Easy right? Well, no, actually. When’s the last time you updated your smart light bulb? Your UPS? This problem will be with us for years. How many people do you think will hear these advisories? It’s been out for almost two weeks at the time of this recording.
  • Folks, it really is time to ask yourself if it’s worth having someone know everything about you, or take control of your network in exchange for being able to shut off a light from two rooms away.
  • NanoLeaf light panels, the app allows you to download other people’s light patterns and put them on

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 12th of July at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

• Owen Peery – peeryo@sfusd.edu Twitter @owenpeery
• Joe – www.Tllts.org  linuxlugcast.com MeWe jb@mintcast.org 
• Bo – undercastnetwork.com
• Moss – Triad Bardic College, Peaceful Hippo, MeWe, music on Bandcamp and Moss Bliss’ YouTube channel or Robert Warren’s channel, I should have my ReverbNation site back soon, moss@mintcast.org, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com, Sponsus (Now with Tiers, and a Donate Button!)!
• Tony Hughes – HPR –  http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=338 Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/ Twitter @TonyH1212, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com th@mintcast.org   
• Tony Watts – tw@mintcast.org, Echoes of Savages (band)
• Josh – josh@mintcast.org, josh@edublocks.org, edublocks.org and @all_about_code on Twitter
• Leo – leochavez.org and @leochavez on Twitter, and you can get your five minute news digest at Full Circle Weekly News

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.

Download

In our Innards section, we make our 2020 Predictions!

And finally, our listener feedback

LINUX INNARDS: 

2020 Predictions:

• Joe
  • We will see many more operating systems that are optimized and working for the Raspberry Pi 4.  
  • Probably also see a new slim version sometime this year
  • Microsoft will push more towards applications that can run on either operating system.  We will still be blind to their evil plans.
  • The announcement for edge OS will be towards the end of the year
• Leo
  • Microsoft Office will have a native Linux version released
  • Adobe Photoshop will have a native Linux version released
  • AutoCAD will have a native Linux version released
  • Moss will record a Gentoo show
  • Firefox vs. The World. Firefox will be the last popular non-Chromium holdout.
• Tony W
  • Maru OS will significantly expand supported devices
    • Will add support for a Oneplus device, very likely 3/3T
    • Will also add support for Galaxy Note devices, Note 9 and/or Note 10
  • We will see convergence on Pine64 devices, with Pinephone able to dock to peripherals and run full desktop applications
  • A big box store will sell a PC preconfigured with Linux in 2020
• Tony H
  • Linux Driver support will continue to improve and more hardware manufacturers (Nvidia I’m looking at you) will develop open source Linux Drivers. 
  • I’m banking on a New R.Pi revision if not a totally new model, I still think that adding M.2 support, as other SBC manufacturers have, is the way to go in the long term. But this will probably require a totally new board design and may still be a year or 2 away. It may be that someone designs an add on board that will provide this function, but if they do it needs to be a device that allows the drive to be the boot drive.  
• Moss
  • I was going to beg off on any predictions. But no. Now that Canonical has agreements with Microsoft for WSL and Amazon for Ubuntu Pro and AWS, I predict they will begin (or continue, if they have already begun in secret) working on agreements with other megacorps such as Alphabet, Oracle, SAP, and Apache.
  • If they succeed with any one of these new alliances, they will be insulated from potential buyouts and takeovers. I therefore predict this is the year they go IPO.
• Oliver
  • End of Windows 7 support won’t increase the Linux desktop uptake
  • Intel’s new Graphics card wont suck on Linux
• Eric Lietz (listener)
  • Purism will go out of business – the Librem 5 phone endeavor will put it under
  • The PinePhone will be an amazing product and success story for Pine64
  • An major industry specific software company (Adobe, Autodesk (for AutoCAD), or similar) will offer a Linux version for a flagship software product
  • Microsoft will offer Office 365 on Linux
  • Linux preinstalled from a major hardware supplier will be available in big box stores available off of the shelf

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

•  Katya* (from Discord)
• Erik Lietz
• Benjamin Moser

CHECK THIS OUT! 

• Moss
  • Is Safari converting to chromium?
• Tony H 
  • HPR New Years Eve Show/Marathon 
• Joe 
  • Rambler will drop NGINX criminal case

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

• Next Episode will be January 12th, 2PM Central, 8PM UTC

WRAP-UP:

• Joe – www.Tllts.org  linuxlugcast.com MeWe jb@mintcast.org 
• Bo – undercastnetwork.com 

• Moss – Triad Bardic College, Peaceful Hippo, MeWe, music on Bandcamp and Moss Bliss’ YouTube channel or Robert Warren’s channel, I should have my ReverbNation site back soon, moss@mintcast.org, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com, Sponsus (Now with Tiers, and a Donate Button!)!

• Tony Hughes – HPR –  http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=338 Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/ Twitter @TonyH1212, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com th@mintcast.org   

• Tony Watts – tw@mintcast.org, Echoes of Savages (band)
• Josh – josh@mintcast.org, josh@edublocks.org, edublocks.org and @all_about_code on Twitter
• Leo – leochavez.org and @leochavez on Twitter, and you can get your five minute news digest at Full Circle Weekly News

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!)

Download

In our Innards section, we make our 2020 Predictions!

And finally, our listener feedback

LINUX INNARDS: 

2020 Predictions:

• Joe
  • We will see many more operating systems that are optimized and working for the Raspberry Pi 4.  
  • Probably also see a new slim version sometime this year
  • Microsoft will push more towards applications that can run on either operating system.  We will still be blind to their evil plans.
  • The announcement for edge OS will be towards the end of the year
• Leo
  • Microsoft Office will have a native Linux version released
  • Adobe Photoshop will have a native Linux version released
  • AutoCAD will have a native Linux version released
  • Moss will record a Gentoo show
  • Firefox vs. The World. Firefox will be the last popular non-Chromium holdout.
• Tony W
  • Maru OS will significantly expand supported devices
    • Will add support for a Oneplus device, very likely 3/3T
    • Will also add support for Galaxy Note devices, Note 9 and/or Note 10
  • We will see convergence on Pine64 devices, with Pinephone able to dock to peripherals and run full desktop applications
  • A big box store will sell a PC preconfigured with Linux in 2020
• Tony H
  • Linux Driver support will continue to improve and more hardware manufacturers (Nvidia I’m looking at you) will develop open source Linux Drivers. 
  • I’m banking on a New R.Pi revision if not a totally new model, I still think that adding M.2 support, as other SBC manufacturers have, is the way to go in the long term. But this will probably require a totally new board design and may still be a year or 2 away. It may be that someone designs an add on board that will provide this function, but if they do it needs to be a device that allows the drive to be the boot drive.  
• Moss
  • I was going to beg off on any predictions. But no. Now that Canonical has agreements with Microsoft for WSL and Amazon for Ubuntu Pro and AWS, I predict they will begin (or continue, if they have already begun in secret) working on agreements with other megacorps such as Alphabet, Oracle, SAP, and Apache.
  • If they succeed with any one of these new alliances, they will be insulated from potential buyouts and takeovers. I therefore predict this is the year they go IPO.
• Oliver
  • End of Windows 7 support won’t increase the Linux desktop uptake
  • Intel’s new Graphics card wont suck on Linux
• Eric Lietz (listener)
  • Purism will go out of business – the Librem 5 phone endeavor will put it under
  • The PinePhone will be an amazing product and success story for Pine64
  • An major industry specific software company (Adobe, Autodesk (for AutoCAD), or similar) will offer a Linux version for a flagship software product
  • Microsoft will offer Office 365 on Linux
  • Linux preinstalled from a major hardware supplier will be available in big box stores available off of the shelf

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

•  Katya* (from Discord)
• Erik Lietz
• Benjamin Moser

CHECK THIS OUT! 

• Moss
  • Is Safari converting to chromium?
• Tony H 
  • HPR New Years Eve Show/Marathon 
• Joe 
  • Rambler will drop NGINX criminal case

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

• Next Episode will be January 12th, 2PM Central, 8PM UTC

WRAP-UP:

• Joe – www.Tllts.org  linuxlugcast.com MeWe jb@mintcast.org 
• Bo – undercastnetwork.com 

• Moss – Triad Bardic College, Peaceful Hippo, MeWe, music on Bandcamp and Moss Bliss’ YouTube channel or Robert Warren’s channel, I should have my ReverbNation site back soon, moss@mintcast.org, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com, Sponsus (Now with Tiers, and a Donate Button!)!

• Tony Hughes – HPR –  http://hackerpublicradio.org/correspondents.php?hostid=338 Occasional Blog https://tony-hughes.blogspot.com/ Twitter @TonyH1212, distrohoppersdigest@gmail.com th@mintcast.org   

• Tony Watts – tw@mintcast.org, Echoes of Savages (band)
• Josh – josh@mintcast.org, josh@edublocks.org, edublocks.org and @all_about_code on Twitter
• Leo – leochavez.org and @leochavez on Twitter, and you can get your five minute news digest at Full Circle Weekly News

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!)