KDE – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Mon, 15 Sep 2025 21:40:23 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png KDE – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 164426984 468 – Very Plexable https://mintcast.org/468-very-plexable/ Mon, 15 Sep 2025 21:40:22 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7640 First up in the news: Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara” released, Mint Monthly News – August

In security and privacy: Plex is a problem again

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

]]> First up in the news: Linux Mint 22.2 “Zara” released, Mint Monthly News – August

In security and privacy: Plex is a problem again

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Link To Full Show Notes

The News:


Mint 22.2 ‘Zara’ released


From the Mint blog by Clem


What’s new in Mint 22.2 Zara


Release Notes for Mint 22.2 Zara


How to upgrade from Mint 22.1


LMDE 7 beta expected in Sep. 2025; Mint 22.3 in Dec. 2025


KDE launches its own distribution (again)


Firefox To End 32-bit support in 2026


Run Windows apps in Linux using open source WinBoat


Is Roku Driving the Final Nail in the Coffin of Traditional TV?


Not completely linux related but Borderlands 4 released Sept 12


Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite Linux Performance Improving But Short Of AMD Ryzen & Intel Core Ultra

Security and Privacy


Plex User Data Exposed


An (almost) catastrophic OpenZFS bug and the humans that made it (and Rust is here too)

Check This Out


NerdyDayTrips


The Bullshit Machine

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

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

]]> 7640 450 – Crumbling Foundations https://mintcast.org/450-crumbling-foundations/ Sat, 16 Nov 2024 02:43:09 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7278 First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – October 2024, Xfce 4.20 Pre1 Pre-Release Published For Testing, KDE's New Distro, Mozilla Foundation crumbles as third of staff cast off

In security and privacy: We are secure in our ignorance

Then in our Wanderings: Bill upgrades fast, and breaks things, Joe fixes even more things, Moss goes paperwhite, and Majid headbangs.

In our Innards section: We talk digital Hygene

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

]]> First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – October 2024, Xfce 4.20 Pre1 Pre-Release Published For Testing, KDE’s New Distro, Mozilla Foundation crumbles as third of staff cast off

In security and privacy: We are secure in our ignorance

Then in our Wanderings: Bill upgrades fast, and breaks things, Joe fixes even more things, Moss goes paperwhite, and Majid headbangs.

In our Innards section: We talk digital Hygene

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Full Show Notes Here

The News:


Mint Monthly News – October 2024


Xfce 4.20 Pre1 Pre-Release Published For Testing


KDE’s New Distro: Btrfs-Based, Immutable Linux OS, with Flatpak and Snap


Mozilla Foundation crumbles as third of staff cast off

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill 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!>

]]> 7278 438 – Copilot Takeover https://mintcast.org/438-copilot-takeover/ Fri, 31 May 2024 23:26:32 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6940 First up in the news: Mozilla Reveals New Features Coming to Firefox, Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for NVIDIA Users, KDE Plasma 6.1 Beta Released With Wayland Explicit Sync, Input Capture Portal & More, KDE Plasma 6.1 Lands Dynamic Triple Buffering Support, Btrfs Sends In Fixes For Linux 6.10 & Restores "norecovery" Mount Option, Turkey bans Distrowatch

In security and privacy: High-severity GitLab flaw lets attackers take over accounts, Microsoft unveils Copilot+ PCs with generative AI capabilities baked in, including one that is causing concern for a UK-based watchdog group.

Then in our Wanderings: Joe gets his shots, Bill endeavors to dual boot, Majid creates Frankensteins Ubuntu, and Eric dips his toe into the world of digital art pens and illustration as well as honing his Audacity skills.

]]> First up in the news: Mozilla Reveals New Features Coming to Firefox, Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for NVIDIA Users, KDE Plasma 6.1 Beta Released With Wayland Explicit Sync, Input Capture Portal & More, KDE Plasma 6.1 Lands Dynamic Triple Buffering Support, Btrfs Sends In Fixes For Linux 6.10 & Restores “norecovery” Mount Option, Turkey bans Distrowatch

In security and privacy: High-severity GitLab flaw lets attackers take over accounts, Microsoft unveils Copilot+ PCs with generative AI capabilities baked in, including one that is causing concern for a UK-based watchdog group.

Then in our Wanderings: Joe gets his shots, Bill endeavors to dual boot, Majid creates Frankensteins Ubuntu, and Eric dips his toe into the world of digital art pens and illustration as well as honing his Audacity skills.

Full Show Notes Here

The News

Mozilla Reveals New Features Coming to Firefox

Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for NVIDIA Users

KDE Plasma 6.1 Beta Released With Wayland Explicit Sync, Input Capture Portal & More

KDE Plasma 6.1 Lands Dynamic Triple Buffering Support

Btrfs Sends In Fixes For Linux 6.10 & Restores “norecovery” Mount Option

Turkey bans Distrowatch

Security and Privacy

High-severity GitLab flaw lets attackers take over accounts

The next two articles will actually be discussed during the innards (next episode) but we’ve linked them here anyway.

Microsoft unveils Copilot+ PCs with generative AI capabilities baked in

UK watchdog looking into Microsoft AI taking screenshots

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill 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!>
]]> 6940 432 – “Podcasts Are Better” https://mintcast.org/432-podcasts-are-better/ Wed, 06 Mar 2024 04:53:59 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6736 First up in the news: KDE MegaRelease 6, No open source HDMI 2.1 driver

In security and privacy: New Wi-Fi Vulnerabilities Expose Android and Linux Devices to Hackers

Then in our Wanderings: Bill stops rolling, Joe surprises people by fixing things, Majid needs audio files to become an audiophile

Right Click Here To Download
]]> First up in the news: KDE MegaRelease 6, No open source HDMI 2.1 driver

In security and privacy: New Wi-Fi Vulnerabilities Expose Android and Linux Devices to Hackers,

Then in our Wanderings: Bill stops rolling, Joe surprises people by fixing things, Majid needs audio files to become an audiophile

Full Show Notes Here

The News

KDE MegaRelease 6

HDMI Forum to AMD: No, you can’t make an open source HDMI 2.1 driver

LibreOffice 24.2.1 Office Suite Is Out with More Than 100 Bug Fixes

GParted 1.6 Open-Source Partition Editor Improves exFAT Support and Fixes Bugs – 9to5Linux

Nintendo Sues Yuzu Emulator Developers for Facilitating Switch Piracy

Security And Privacy

New Wi-Fi Vulnerabilities Expose Android and Linux Devices to Hackers

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 6736 427 – “Virginia is For Lovers.” https://mintcast.org/427-virginia-is-for-lovers/ Wed, 13 Dec 2023 03:32:20 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6506 First up in the news: Linux Mint 21.3 “Virginia” – BETAs released, Mint Monthly News – November 2023, Gnome shell updates on Ubuntu 23.10; Zorin has a new desktop; Calibre offers new formats; KDE fixes bugs ahead of Plasma 6; Intel does some driver code clean up; Canonical ports Multipass to Qt6; Linux 6.8 is Dropping Support For Very Old Graphics Drivers.

In security and privacy: Stealthy Linux rootkit found in the wild after going undetected for 2 years

Then in our Wanderings: Bill is mumbling for a week straight; Joe is droning on

Download
]]> First up in the news: Linux Mint 21.3 “Virginia” – BETAs released, Mint Monthly News – November 2023, Gnome shell updates on Ubuntu 23.10; Zorin has a new desktop; Calibre offers new formats; KDE fixes bugs ahead of Plasma 6; Intel does some driver code clean up; Canonical ports Multipass to Qt6; Linux 6.8 is Dropping Support For Very Old Graphics Drivers.

In security and privacy: Stealthy Linux rootkit found in the wild after going undetected for 2 years

Then in our Wanderings: Bill is mumbling for a week straight; Joe is droning on

  1. [skipto time=”00:00:00″] – Intro
  2. [skipto time=”00:01:37″] – News
  3. [skipto time=”00:33:05″] – Security And Privacy
  4. [skipto time=”00:43:53″] – Bi-Weekly Wanderings
  5. [skipto time=”00:58:22″] – Housekeeping and Announcemnts
  6. [skipto time=”00:59:20″] – Wrap Up
  7. [skipto time=”01:03:09″] – Special Thanks
  8. [skipto time=”01:03:53″] – Outro
Full Show Notes Here!

The News

Linux Mint 21.3 “Virginia” – BETAs released

Mint Monthly News – November 2023

GNOME Shell 45.2 Update Rolling out to Ubuntu 23.10

Zorin OS 17 Beta Includes New ‘Spatial Desktop’ Features

Calibre eBook App Now Supports Audio ePubs & Custom Notes

KDE Developers Continue On Bug Fixing Spree Ahead Of Plasma 6.0

Intel Striving To Overhaul Their Multiple Ethernet Linux Drivers: “The Great Code De-dup”

Canonical Releases Multipass 1.13 RC With Snapshots Support, Migrated To Qt6

Linux 6.8 Dropping Support For Very Old Graphics Drivers

Security and Privacy

Stealthy Linux rootkit found in the wild after going undetected for 2 years

Feds Warn Health Sector to Watch for Open-Source Threats

Wrap Up

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other 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!>
]]> 6506 394 – With music on our side to break the old hard drives https://mintcast.org/394-with-music-on-our-side-to-break-the-old-hard-drives/ Fri, 26 Aug 2022 15:20:07 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5598 In security and privacy, Discord and your passwords are pythoned, and hard drives apparently have a taste in music
Then in our Wanderings, Joe plays with his handheld, Bill is setting up a new server, Moss skips the assault and gets a couple batteries, and Norbert has had done some things.
Download
]]> 1:25 The News
16:15 Security and Privacy
26:03 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:22:59 Housekeeping and Announcements

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

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

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

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

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert, Londoner, Tony H, and all others for our audio editing
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 5598 389 – The Out of Memory Daemon is Out of Control https://mintcast.org/389-the-out-of-memory-daemon-is-out-of-control/ Thu, 16 Jun 2022 00:49:43 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5520 In security, Symbiote malware discovered, and Apple M1 chips are found to be flawed;
Then in our Wanderings, Joe is fighting trees, Bill is editing shows from the cab of a truck, Moss is spending Jeff Bezos’ money, Norbert is in a galaxy far far away, and we get to meet our guest, Steve Seguin.
Download
]]> 2:15 The News
41:07 Security and Privacy
46.05 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:25:24 Housekeeping and Announcements

First up in the news, There are new Regolith and Cinnamon desktops, KDE has new gear, Telegram Premium to launch, Plex has new Linux apps, Atom editor gets nuked, noUbuntu works to tame a daemon, System76 goes to Europe, and Europe is all about the C;

In security, Symbiote malware discovered, and Apple M1 chips are found to be flawed;

Then in our Wanderings, Joe is fighting trees, Bill is editing shows from the cab of a truck, Moss is spending Jeff Bezos’ money, Norbert is in a galaxy far far away, and we get to meet our guest, Steve Seguin

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

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 5520 379 – There Can Be Only One https://mintcast.org/379-there-can-be-only-one/ Thu, 10 Mar 2022 16:48:53 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5348 In security, Ubuntu Kernel Security Patches, FGKASLR gets closer to mainline, Data stealing malware hides on Linux servers, Go Daddy data breach
In our Wanderings, Joe does some 3d printing, Josh got a new monitor, Norbert switches OS’s, and Clayton looks back
Download
]]> 1:38 The News
25:43 Security Update
34:58 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:00:23 Announcements & Outro

First up in the News, Linux Mint Edge is out, PinePhone Pro Explorer Edition can be ordered, Gnome and Plasma have new versions you can test, Nvidia and Wayland play nicely on Plasma, and we are all mocking Cosmic,

In security, FOSS is a national security issue and Microsoft decides not to force locks.

Then in our Wanderings, Joe fixes things, Moss installs things, Bill works on things and Norbert writes things down.

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

  • Joe serviced all the bikes in his backyard and watched the crypto market crash
  • Moss upgraded his RAM and been working on Distrohoppers’ Digest
  • Bill has been working on a new podcast with some of his friends
  • Norbert had a misadventure with Arch linux updates

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5348 378 – Reaching Enlightenment https://mintcast.org/378-reaching-enlightenment/ Mon, 14 Feb 2022 15:16:27 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5335 In security, Ubuntu Kernel Security Patches, FGKASLR gets closer to mainline, Data stealing malware hides on Linux servers, Go Daddy data breach
In our Wanderings, Joe does some 3d printing, Josh got a new monitor, Norbert switches OS’s, and Clayton looks back
Download
]]> 1:37 The News
23:17 Security Update
26:04 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:05:52 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news, Mint 20.3 Una is released, Pipewire has a new release and Solus co-lead resigns

In security, Ubuntu Kernel update fixes vulnerabilities and Ryzen Mobile CPU’s and Pluton Security

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

Security Update

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

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5335 375 – Linux! I Choose You! https://mintcast.org/375-linux-i-choose-you/ Fri, 03 Dec 2021 01:17:59 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5285 In security, more ransomware for Linux, EU wants more cyber security, and apt is now safer to use
Then in our Wanderings, Joe has bluetooth problems, Norbert goes mad scientist, Josh does a flip, and Tony has some sad news
Download
]]> 1:47 The News
17:04 Security Update
22:13 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
47:16 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news, a German state chooses Linux, Slackware is closer to release, Cinnamon has an update, and more
In security, more ransomware for Linux, EU wants more cyber security, and apt is now safer to use
Then in our Wanderings, Joe has bluetooth problems, Norbert goes mad scientist, Josh does a flip, and Tony has some sad news

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5285 374.5 – “Smart” Phones https://mintcast.org/374-5-smart-phones/ Fri, 26 Nov 2021 06:22:38 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5280 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:46 Linux Innards
42:07 Vibrations from the Ether
51:07 Check This Out
54:28 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, phones
And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

  • Joe
    • First smartphone was the samsung behold 2 which i hated
    • I also had the htc dash which was a blackberry knockoff but pretty awesome
    • Then the htc hd2 which is the most modded phone ever
      • Windows mobile
      • Android
      • Linux
    • After that i went back to samsung and had the s3 which is a great phone and if you can find one that is working still has its uses.  My son is using one now
      • I used this phone until it died, smaller device but ran well and did everything i needed
      • Still good today as an MP3 player which is what my son uses it for
    • Then the Note 3
      • I used this for a long time
    • S7
      • I still use this for some things but the ports are getting old.  The 3.5mm jack no longer works and the usb connection is a bit wobbly
    • Note 10 plus
  • Tony
    • History – The First Smartphone I bought was the Nexus 4 which I got in February 2013. This was a great introduction to the smartphone experience but quickly started to feel restricted and in October 2014 I made the giant leap to a OnePlus1 which I paid £299 but was a premium phone for a mid range price at the time.
    • When that started to feel its age in 2017 I bought a Nokia 6, this was a great Phone and the following year I purchased the 6.1 upgrade for my wife who had been using my old Nexus 4 as her first Smartphone. Unfortunately I dropped the Nokia in 2018 smashing the screen badly and was sold the Huawei P20 lite which I used as my daily driver until last week when I went and bought the Nokia X20 6.6” behemoth which I am still getting used to.
    • This phone has the advantage of receiving guaranteed Android updates for 3 years from release and I should get to Android 14 before the time runs out from the current Android 11 that is installed.
    • Before retiring the OnePlus1 as my daily driver I did delve into the world of alternative Roms and successfully installed Lineage to it, but had an issue with upgrading it at one point and that led me to purchasing the Nokia 6. A while back I decided to have a play with the OnePlus1 and I have installed Ubuntu Touch to it and last night was playing with it and have got it running the latest update of the 16.04 install. I know that they are working on getting 20.04 and I have enabled this to be downloaded as an OTA update when available for the OnePlus1.
  • Norbert
    • 2010 – Neonode N2
    • 2010 – (Apple iPod Touch 4G)
    • 2014 – Sony Xperia SP
    • 2015 – Sony Xperia Z Ultra
    • 2016 – (Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 9.7”)
    • 2017 – Sony Xperia X Compact
    • 2019 – Samsung Galax
    • y A8 (2018)
    • 2021 – LG G7 ThinQ
  • Josh
    • My initial foray into the world of smartphones were all lower tier devices which were “free” with the signing of a contract. They were all quite terrible and that’s probably why I can’t remember any of them specifically.
    • My first noteworthy smartphone was a Nexus 5 which I purchased early in 2014. It was quite an impressive device for its price point and I still have it today as a backup phone, although it now runs Ubuntu Touch in place of Android. I have had to replace the battery on it once and it does suffer from the all too common power button issue on occasion that causes it to constantly reboot which is why I eventually moved on from it.
    • From there I decided I wanted to focus more on privacy so I went through a number of different flip and feature phones only to find most of them ran stripped down versions of Android and the lackluster performance was maddening. Just attempting to text while the system lagged caused multiple input errors but there was a bit of nostalgia returning to T9 predictive text.
    • I decided to return to the world of smartphones and purchased an LG V30+ off of Ebay. I got it at a very reduced price due to some screen burn in but the phone was pristine outside of that. This is still my daily driver today even though the OS hasn’t received a security update since August of 2019. The DAC is still considered by many to be the best ever put in a phone which is why I’m reluctant to replace it. I use it mainly for listening to music and podcasts and store as little personal data as possible on it.
    • I also purchased a Pinephone UB Ports edition and a Sony Xperia X which I installed Ubuntu Touch on with hopes that one of them could serve as a privacy focused daily driver. The Xperia is usable if you’re willing to compromise convenience quite considerably but the Pinephone remains little more than a developer’s toy that cannot be daily driven under any realistic circumstances. Unfortunately it seems the reality of a capable Linux phone is still quite a ways off into the distance, the hardware is there but the software is definitely not.

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Brad A
  • Larry M
  • William W

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5280 372 – Ryzen Sun https://mintcast.org/372-ryzen-sun/ Wed, 20 Oct 2021 04:49:53 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5244 In security Retpolines patches for performance and Azure Linux boot failures
Then in our Wandering, Joe has some Pi, Norbert edits video, Tony Updates a BIOS, and Nishant upgrades Fedora
Download
]]> 1:44 The News
18:21 Security Update
21:43 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
56:20 Announcements & Outro

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

In security Retpolines patches for performance and Azure Linux boot failures

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

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Bo for our audio production
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logg
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5244 370 – New Wanderers https://mintcast.org/370-new-wanderers/ Wed, 22 Sep 2021 05:40:56 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5214 In security, no encrypted chats are safe
Then in our Wanderings, we hear from the old AND new crew
Download
]]> 1:35 The News
30:19 Security Update
38:58 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
50:36 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news Linux Mint gets a new website, A new point release, Firefox snaps back, Gnome and Plasma get updates, and much more

In security, no encrypted chats are safe

Then in our Wanderings, we hear from the old AND new crew

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio production, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5214 369.5 – The LMDE to Be https://mintcast.org/369-5-the-lmde-to-be/ Wed, 15 Sep 2021 06:16:12 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5207 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 2:02 Linux Innards
23:36 Vibrations from the Ether
44:48 Check This Out
50:36 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section Debian 11, and what that means for LMDE

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

What will LMDE 5 look like?

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Henrik
  • Hank
  • Raphaël
    • https://linuxmint-troubleshooting-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq.html

Check This Out

Announcements

  • If you had issues getting to mintCast.org over the past few weeks, there was an issue with billing even though we were all paid up. Thanks to Josh Lowe for wrangling everything for us. The site is back up and going strong.
  • Leo will be stepping down as Host for the foreseeable future starting with Episode 272. You’re in very capable hands and who knows? Maybe more community hosts!
    • I’m not going far. I’ll stay on to help produce the shows in content and editing, and I’ll likely be back with a voice where I can find the open weekends.
  • Next Episode – 2 pm US Central time on Sunday September 19, 2021
  • Get mintCast converted to your time zone
  • Next Live Stream –  2 pm US Central time on September 25, 2021

Wrap-up

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio production, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord 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!>
]]> 5207 mintCast 346 – It’s Not You, It’s Me (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-346-its-not-you-its-me-mp3/ Wed, 21 Oct 2020 04:37:58 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4716 Then, our news lots of releases, a new feature and a birthday
In security, we look at an IoT bug
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

In security, we look at an IoT bug

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

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

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

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

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Londoner for our time zone link
  • Owen Peery for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4716 mintCast 346 – It’s Not You, It’s Me https://mintcast.org/mintcast-346-its-not-you-its-me/ Wed, 21 Oct 2020 04:20:17 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4709 Then, our news lots of releases, a new feature and a birthday
In security, we look at an IoT bug
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

In security, we look at an IoT bug

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

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

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

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

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Londoner for our time zone link
  • Owen Peery for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4709 mintCast 342 – Security Theater (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-342-security-theater-mp3/ Wed, 26 Aug 2020 04:50:08 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4592 Then, in our news, Pinta, Lutris and Mozilla
In security, we talk security recommendations and the NSA
Download
]]>

Download

We would like to welcome Owen Peery to the team. He’s our new editor!

1:40 Wanderings
46:32 News
1:05:05 Security
1:22:05 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been testing out a new keyboard, Tony Hughes tries to remove a finger (again), Joe has been soldering and reading, Moss has been adding more distros,

Then, in our news, Pinta, Lutris and Mozilla

In security, we talk security recommendations and the NSA

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Digging into some errors I got, last stream on Youtube. It was complaining that I was streaming at only 3500kbps. That was odd as I’ve always streamed at OBS’s default. Turns out, Youtube wants 4500kbps now. So, I cranked the video bitrate up to 6400 in OBS’s Output section. No errors!
    • Kernel 5.8 is smooth as silk
    • Got a new keyboard. A cheap mechanical with OUTEMU Red switches. Cost $35, but also came with a mouse pad and mouse. They’re all RGB of course, except for the mouse pad.
    • Been watching Star Trek Lower Decks. It’s hilarious. It’s a story of about 5 ensigns that work on the starship Cerritos. They’re not high ranking, and only get to do grunt work for the most part, but they find their niche and get their jobs done. I’ve never been much of a Trek fan, but this is seriously something I can see myself watching until the end of the series. It has the feel of Rick and Morty and Futurama fused together. Hijinks obviously ensue.
    • Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 Trailer
  • Tony H
    • So I managed to drill my finger in an accident while doing some work on the matchbox cars, it’s not good when a drill bit brakes while you are drilling a post out and you have the model held in your hand, the cut was very sore and the end of the finger is still numb from a little bit of nerve damage as a result. What with that and cutting myself while cooking my wife thinks I have a death wish.
    • As a result of the accident I haven’t been doing much in the way of restoration for the last couple of weeks but I have made some nice eBay buys which have resulted in the collection and spares to the restoration has grown a little larger, although I had to stop bidding on stuff as I wouldn’t have been around for any deliveries that may have arrived after I came away, it has probably saved me a few shekels.
    • For a little light relief I installed Ubuntu Touch on my OnePlus 1 and while it was a fairly painless process unlike trying to update Lineage OS to 17.1 on the same phone which I can’t get it to do, it is definitely NOT ready for prime time yet. All the apps seem to be web based and do not work very well, I was thinking of Using the phone as my Sat Nav for my car but as you need the internet even if it worked well, which it doesn’t then I would need to get a new sim card and data plan as it will not work on the GPS alone as it needs a web connection for the apps to work. I also tried to connect to the WiFi here at Woodbrooke and it will not connect to the login page to finish authorising access to the WiFi.
    • I’m continuing to play with Mint 20 Mate on the DHD laptop with the intention of this being my review for the September show. Given my findings so far It might be a short review as apart from the Snapd issue and a few programs being updated it is pretty much business as usual, so while I am here at Woodbrooke I’m having a look at a distro suggested by a listener, SparkyLinux and while it is based on Debian they do what Mint used to do with the LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) and base one of the spins on the testing branch with a warning that it is not for those wanting a stable system or are new to Linux. Just to note that both iso’s will fit on a 2Gb Flash drive (or less than 1GB if you opt for one of the stable minimal GUI spins). So if you have an old one kicking around you were wondering what to use it for, then maybe SparkyLinux could be an option.    
    • I wrote the 4th in my Full Circle Magazine series on podcast production the first of which was in issue 159 at the end of July. I’m not a natural writer but I have been enjoying sharing what I have learned since starting on mintCast and DHD.
  • Moss
    • I installed Gecko ROLLING to my desktop. So now I have ROLLING on my desktop and STATIC on my laptop (equivalent to openSUSE Tumbleweed and Leap, respectively). 
    • On the 15th, I installed KDE neon, also to my desktop. Oddly, the announcement that neon was available based on 20.04 did not mention that you would still be installing the 18.04 version, and then be greeted with the Upgrade button. It took a few more button pushes to get the upgrade started, but it ran beautifully. I then ran updates and installed some of my more common additions, including Stacer 1.10. Stacer ran great, but Discover popped up and said there was an update to it. I ran the update. And now Stacer wouldn’t load, it said “program not found”. So I reinstalled from my .deb package and it worked again… and Discover said there was an update again. I have posted to the KDE neon user forum to report this issue and ask how I can get Discover to ignore the update. Apparently they think an app in the repo is newer than the same app from a .deb file, but why it disables the program to run the update is beyond me. Note to self: Check the repo to see if an application is there before installing saved .deb files.
    • I now have only one free partition each on my desktop and laptop. And I’m starting to have memory issues — not my computer, me, trying to remember what all I have installed. Updating has already gotten beyond the “fun” level.
    • I am tempted to install Releax Linux to my system even though it’s only 0.5beta. This is a fully independent distro out of India, with a new package manager and everything. It sounds really exciting. Maybe I should dig up Tony Hughes’ instructions and learn how to install it in a VM.
    • I posted a new blog to LinuxQuestions.org.
    • I did some performing on Thursday the 20th on Eurofilk, which is now happening every other Thursday. I got to play with Cecilia Eng, first time for me and she’s a legend, and a total of 9 others in the Zoom room, including my friend K.J. Noren. This is the first performing I’ve done since about 2 weeks after my accident. My shoulder hurt a lot more afterward, but I seem to have gained mobility.
    • We’re about ⅔ of the way through Blood Rites, the 6th Dresden Files book. Dresden missed a huge hint when he had a major data download from Thomas; there is no explanation for that miss. We’re enjoying the book, we just wish Dresden could be more successful stopping people from dying.
  • Joe
    • Watched a lot of YouTube and did some soldering
    • Took a break for a few days from reading but still got some in
      • Up to book 20 in Drizzt
      • Demon Accords book 16
      • Big Damn Hero
        • Firefly book, surprisingly good
    • Soldered some headphones
      • New MMCX connectors came in and got them set up on 2 sets of headphones.
      • Only need to redo one of the connections at this point
    • Was informed that I missed the 8th book of the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony.  Although I am more than a little disillusioned by his work since he uses it as a platform to push his ideology on age of consent.
      • Also the book does not exist in audio format from what I can see so if I do read it, it will have to be text aloud
    • Attempted to make the macro keyboard, followed the instructions exactly but was not able to get it working.
      • Rechecked my soldering several times but it was solid
      • Only about 6 of the 12 keys would work.  
      • So I took it apart down to the board on the keypad and did continuity tests on the whole thing
      • Bad board and a slightly different pinout than was in the instructions but the different pinout shouldn’t be a concern
      • I could try to solder directly to the board and to the pins but that seems a little crazy even for me.  Although if I get bored enough you never know.
      • I have ordered a couple of different types of keyboards to give another try using different methods
      • Right before the show a test set of 4 mechanical keys showed up and I was able to get them wired in place although I still need to wire the Promicro and I need to 3D-print the case for it
      • Thinking about ordering a set of 90 MX Cherry Blues and 3d printing everything else
  • Tony W
    • Refinishing my basement practice/rehearsal/studio/home office space
      • Installed carpet to cover concrete floor
      • Covered the one concrete wall in this room with drywall/heavy cloth, for now
      • Have insulation and drywall ready to go for remaining walls/ceilings
      • Will most likely get a permit from county before installing drywall over electrical, ductwork etc
      • This involved disassembling all of my tech, my podcast setup, etc and almost did not set back up before today’s podcast
    • Updated to Mint 20
      • Upgrade was fairly seamless, but had a couple minor issues
        • The update did break my Grub.  Reinstalled Grub very easily using MX Linux live USB Boot Repair (courtesy of Ventoy)
        • The version of Mumble installed from Software Manager didn’t work, had to install the Flatpak
      • Installed Linux via Crouton on Acer Chromebook 314
          • Crostini was great, but somewhat useless to me as there is no direct access to hardware (particularly USB audio devices) 
        • Crouton gives you full Linux desktop courtesy of chroot
        • Process to install:
          • Have to turn on Developer mode (which erases local data)
          • Follow instructions to install via crosh (Chrome terminal)
          • Once installed, to enter Linux desktop: Sudo enter-chroot startxfce4 (or sudo startxfce4 as a shortcut)
        • From there, Ctrl/Alt/Shift Forward and Ctrl/Alt/Shift/Back to switch between ChromeOS and XFCE (or desktop of your choice)
        • Default is XFCE but Cinnamon, KDE, e17, LXDE and Unity are also available 
        • IT WORKED!!!  My audio interface works perfectly with XFCE running on the Chromebook. 
          • Audacity, Mumble, OBS studio ready to go
        • Downsides: 
          • Developer Mode
          • Not supported – ChromeOS updates can break it
          • Default install is 16.04.  I believe you can specify 18.04
        • I think I will be using this.  It’s a cheap, light portable device with 12 hour battery life that I can take on the go

THE NEWS

SECURITY UPDATE

  • NSA reveals SOMETHING about Russian hacks
  • Linux Malware and Securing Your System
    • CTT goes in early about preventive measures and turns his nose up at the idea that someone would be running kernels earlier than 3.7 because it was released in 2012. RHEL 6 is still on 2.6… Sure. For a desktop user, it’s probably not likely, but for Enterprise? The NSA and the FBI didn’t put out a report for grandma in her kitchen. They put it out for the military and other institutions that are slow moving. In some cases, RHEL 5 is still in use and in Extended Life Phase.
    • Don’t install untrusted kernel modules or unsigned kernels.
    • SecureBoot
    • CTT offers a script that does:
      • Turning on UFW
      • Limiting SSH (which prevents brute force/dictionary style attacks)
      • Opening 80/443
      • Denying everything else incoming
      • Allowing everything outgoing
    • The script is a little odd. While limiting SSH is good, much thought should be given to just using keys, and disabling password login altogether. Also, why open 80 and 443? You would really only need this if you’re hosting a website of some kind. Most tools use custom ports (i.e., Cockpit uses port 9090).
  • Alexa Can Be Hacked, Instagram Retains Deleted Data, Linux Malware Found By NSA & FBI – ThreatWire

Announcements:

Our next episode will be September 6, 2020 at 2 pm Central US Time, 7 pm UTC, 8 pm British Summer Time – https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Add Dallas Tx

Wrap-up:

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

  • Londoner for his suggestion to use timeanddate.com
  • 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.
]]> 4592 mintCast 342 – Security Theater https://mintcast.org/mintcast-342-security-theater/ Wed, 26 Aug 2020 04:49:31 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4588 Then, in our news, Pinta, Lutris and Mozilla
In security, we talk security recommendations and the NSA
Download
]]>

Download

We would like to welcome Owen Peery to the team. He’s our new editor!

1:40 Wanderings
46:32 News
1:05:05 Security
1:22:05 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been testing out a new keyboard, Tony Hughes tries to remove a finger (again), Joe has been soldering and reading, Moss has been adding more distros,

Then, in our news, Pinta, Lutris and Mozilla

In security, we talk security recommendations and the NSA

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Digging into some errors I got, last stream on Youtube. It was complaining that I was streaming at only 3500kbps. That was odd as I’ve always streamed at OBS’s default. Turns out, Youtube wants 4500kbps now. So, I cranked the video bitrate up to 6400 in OBS’s Output section. No errors!
    • Kernel 5.8 is smooth as silk
    • Got a new keyboard. A cheap mechanical with OUTEMU Red switches. Cost $35, but also came with a mouse pad and mouse. They’re all RGB of course, except for the mouse pad.
    • Been watching Star Trek Lower Decks. It’s hilarious. It’s a story of about 5 ensigns that work on the starship Cerritos. They’re not high ranking, and only get to do grunt work for the most part, but they find their niche and get their jobs done. I’ve never been much of a Trek fan, but this is seriously something I can see myself watching until the end of the series. It has the feel of Rick and Morty and Futurama fused together. Hijinks obviously ensue.
    • Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 Trailer
  • Tony H
    • So I managed to drill my finger in an accident while doing some work on the matchbox cars, it’s not good when a drill bit brakes while you are drilling a post out and you have the model held in your hand, the cut was very sore and the end of the finger is still numb from a little bit of nerve damage as a result. What with that and cutting myself while cooking my wife thinks I have a death wish.
    • As a result of the accident I haven’t been doing much in the way of restoration for the last couple of weeks but I have made some nice eBay buys which have resulted in the collection and spares to the restoration has grown a little larger, although I had to stop bidding on stuff as I wouldn’t have been around for any deliveries that may have arrived after I came away, it has probably saved me a few shekels.
    • For a little light relief I installed Ubuntu Touch on my OnePlus 1 and while it was a fairly painless process unlike trying to update Lineage OS to 17.1 on the same phone which I can’t get it to do, it is definitely NOT ready for prime time yet. All the apps seem to be web based and do not work very well, I was thinking of Using the phone as my Sat Nav for my car but as you need the internet even if it worked well, which it doesn’t then I would need to get a new sim card and data plan as it will not work on the GPS alone as it needs a web connection for the apps to work. I also tried to connect to the WiFi here at Woodbrooke and it will not connect to the login page to finish authorising access to the WiFi.
    • I’m continuing to play with Mint 20 Mate on the DHD laptop with the intention of this being my review for the September show. Given my findings so far It might be a short review as apart from the Snapd issue and a few programs being updated it is pretty much business as usual, so while I am here at Woodbrooke I’m having a look at a distro suggested by a listener, SparkyLinux and while it is based on Debian they do what Mint used to do with the LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) and base one of the spins on the testing branch with a warning that it is not for those wanting a stable system or are new to Linux. Just to note that both iso’s will fit on a 2Gb Flash drive (or less than 1GB if you opt for one of the stable minimal GUI spins). So if you have an old one kicking around you were wondering what to use it for, then maybe SparkyLinux could be an option.    
    • I wrote the 4th in my Full Circle Magazine series on podcast production the first of which was in issue 159 at the end of July. I’m not a natural writer but I have been enjoying sharing what I have learned since starting on mintCast and DHD.
  • Moss
    • I installed Gecko ROLLING to my desktop. So now I have ROLLING on my desktop and STATIC on my laptop (equivalent to openSUSE Tumbleweed and Leap, respectively). 
    • On the 15th, I installed KDE neon, also to my desktop. Oddly, the announcement that neon was available based on 20.04 did not mention that you would still be installing the 18.04 version, and then be greeted with the Upgrade button. It took a few more button pushes to get the upgrade started, but it ran beautifully. I then ran updates and installed some of my more common additions, including Stacer 1.10. Stacer ran great, but Discover popped up and said there was an update to it. I ran the update. And now Stacer wouldn’t load, it said “program not found”. So I reinstalled from my .deb package and it worked again… and Discover said there was an update again. I have posted to the KDE neon user forum to report this issue and ask how I can get Discover to ignore the update. Apparently they think an app in the repo is newer than the same app from a .deb file, but why it disables the program to run the update is beyond me. Note to self: Check the repo to see if an application is there before installing saved .deb files.
    • I now have only one free partition each on my desktop and laptop. And I’m starting to have memory issues — not my computer, me, trying to remember what all I have installed. Updating has already gotten beyond the “fun” level.
    • I am tempted to install Releax Linux to my system even though it’s only 0.5beta. This is a fully independent distro out of India, with a new package manager and everything. It sounds really exciting. Maybe I should dig up Tony Hughes’ instructions and learn how to install it in a VM.
    • I posted a new blog to LinuxQuestions.org.
    • I did some performing on Thursday the 20th on Eurofilk, which is now happening every other Thursday. I got to play with Cecilia Eng, first time for me and she’s a legend, and a total of 9 others in the Zoom room, including my friend K.J. Noren. This is the first performing I’ve done since about 2 weeks after my accident. My shoulder hurt a lot more afterward, but I seem to have gained mobility.
    • We’re about ⅔ of the way through Blood Rites, the 6th Dresden Files book. Dresden missed a huge hint when he had a major data download from Thomas; there is no explanation for that miss. We’re enjoying the book, we just wish Dresden could be more successful stopping people from dying.
  • Joe
    • Watched a lot of YouTube and did some soldering
    • Took a break for a few days from reading but still got some in
      • Up to book 20 in Drizzt
      • Demon Accords book 16
      • Big Damn Hero
        • Firefly book, surprisingly good
    • Soldered some headphones
      • New MMCX connectors came in and got them set up on 2 sets of headphones.
      • Only need to redo one of the connections at this point
    • Was informed that I missed the 8th book of the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony.  Although I am more than a little disillusioned by his work since he uses it as a platform to push his ideology on age of consent.
      • Also the book does not exist in audio format from what I can see so if I do read it, it will have to be text aloud
    • Attempted to make the macro keyboard, followed the instructions exactly but was not able to get it working.
      • Rechecked my soldering several times but it was solid
      • Only about 6 of the 12 keys would work.  
      • So I took it apart down to the board on the keypad and did continuity tests on the whole thing
      • Bad board and a slightly different pinout than was in the instructions but the different pinout shouldn’t be a concern
      • I could try to solder directly to the board and to the pins but that seems a little crazy even for me.  Although if I get bored enough you never know.
      • I have ordered a couple of different types of keyboards to give another try using different methods
      • Right before the show a test set of 4 mechanical keys showed up and I was able to get them wired in place although I still need to wire the Promicro and I need to 3D-print the case for it
      • Thinking about ordering a set of 90 MX Cherry Blues and 3d printing everything else
  • Tony W
    • Refinishing my basement practice/rehearsal/studio/home office space
      • Installed carpet to cover concrete floor
      • Covered the one concrete wall in this room with drywall/heavy cloth, for now
      • Have insulation and drywall ready to go for remaining walls/ceilings
      • Will most likely get a permit from county before installing drywall over electrical, ductwork etc
      • This involved disassembling all of my tech, my podcast setup, etc and almost did not set back up before today’s podcast
    • Updated to Mint 20
      • Upgrade was fairly seamless, but had a couple minor issues
        • The update did break my Grub.  Reinstalled Grub very easily using MX Linux live USB Boot Repair (courtesy of Ventoy)
        • The version of Mumble installed from Software Manager didn’t work, had to install the Flatpak
      • Installed Linux via Crouton on Acer Chromebook 314
          • Crostini was great, but somewhat useless to me as there is no direct access to hardware (particularly USB audio devices) 
        • Crouton gives you full Linux desktop courtesy of chroot
        • Process to install:
          • Have to turn on Developer mode (which erases local data)
          • Follow instructions to install via crosh (Chrome terminal)
          • Once installed, to enter Linux desktop: Sudo enter-chroot startxfce4 (or sudo startxfce4 as a shortcut)
        • From there, Ctrl/Alt/Shift Forward and Ctrl/Alt/Shift/Back to switch between ChromeOS and XFCE (or desktop of your choice)
        • Default is XFCE but Cinnamon, KDE, e17, LXDE and Unity are also available 
        • IT WORKED!!!  My audio interface works perfectly with XFCE running on the Chromebook. 
          • Audacity, Mumble, OBS studio ready to go
        • Downsides: 
          • Developer Mode
          • Not supported – ChromeOS updates can break it
          • Default install is 16.04.  I believe you can specify 18.04
        • I think I will be using this.  It’s a cheap, light portable device with 12 hour battery life that I can take on the go

THE NEWS

SECURITY UPDATE

  • NSA reveals SOMETHING about Russian hacks
  • Linux Malware and Securing Your System
    • CTT goes in early about preventive measures and turns his nose up at the idea that someone would be running kernels earlier than 3.7 because it was released in 2012. RHEL 6 is still on 2.6… Sure. For a desktop user, it’s probably not likely, but for Enterprise? The NSA and the FBI didn’t put out a report for grandma in her kitchen. They put it out for the military and other institutions that are slow moving. In some cases, RHEL 5 is still in use and in Extended Life Phase.
    • Don’t install untrusted kernel modules or unsigned kernels.
    • SecureBoot
    • CTT offers a script that does:
      • Turning on UFW
      • Limiting SSH (which prevents brute force/dictionary style attacks)
      • Opening 80/443
      • Denying everything else incoming
      • Allowing everything outgoing
    • The script is a little odd. While limiting SSH is good, much thought should be given to just using keys, and disabling password login altogether. Also, why open 80 and 443? You would really only need this if you’re hosting a website of some kind. Most tools use custom ports (i.e., Cockpit uses port 9090).
  • Alexa Can Be Hacked, Instagram Retains Deleted Data, Linux Malware Found By NSA & FBI – ThreatWire

Announcements:

Our next episode will be September 6, 2020 at 2 pm Central US Time, 7 pm UTC, 8 pm British Summer Time – https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Add Dallas Tx

Wrap-up:

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

  • Londoner for his suggestion to use timeanddate.com
  • 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.
]]> 4588 mintCast 334.5 – Fossa Fuel (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-334-5-fossa-fuel-mp3/ Wed, 13 May 2020 04:13:26 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4396 And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we talk about the versions of Ubuntu 20.04 we’re playing with.

And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS: 

Let’s Talk About Ubuntu 20.04 (See OMGubuntu article on 20.04 flavors)

  • Ubuntu (Gnome) Features
    • Linux Kernel 5.4
    • Faster boot speeds
    • OEM logo displayed during boot
    • Improved appearance
    • Dark theme
    • Fractional scaling setting
    • Ships with GNOME 3.36
    • Redesigned login screen
    • New lock screen
    • Snap-based Ubuntu Software app
    • Improved GNOME Shell performance
    • Refined ZFS install support
    • Game mode added to the archives
    • Joe – Installed Ubuntu 20.04 on my 7140 tablet with gnome.  Had some small problems with Gnome and the touchpad left and right click not wanting to work although both did work with an external mouse.  So I installed Cinnamon and Mate and my touchpad worked fine in both.
      • Rotation also worked without a hitch in Gnome and Cinnamon but I did not search for the setting in Mate since I will use that with X2go for remote access
      • Haven’t set up my normal scripting for file movement and sshfs yet but it should work fine. 
      • Noticed a series of games already installed.  Very Windows XP style
      • Turning on touchpad scrolling did not work until after reboot
      • I also didn’t like the touchpad acceleration.  After I adjusted it I did not notice any change until after a reboot and then it was fine
      • Boot times are fast and smooth although there is a device related problem with reboot
      • Looks beautiful and runs smooth
      • Still haven’t installed UKUU and upgraded to the most recent kernel
      • But I did check out snap which is built in.  works great. 
        • Installed the snap for Standard Notes and Mumble and was able to use auto completion with no issues and they immediately were available in the start menu
    • Leo
      • Installed Ubuntu 20.04 Beta on the T450s. This laptop!
      • Tried to stick with the default install on all of the apps I use. This meant installing lots and lots of things via Snap. The only reason I tend to shy away from Snaps is the theming issues (the wonky looking cursor, off-looking GTK Themes, and slow startup times).
      • Talked to Martin Wimpress about these on BDLL last night and got some clarification about where the Ubuntu team is headed. These issues are absolutely on their radar, but got pushed back for some more technical issues that needed to land in 20.04. These issues are now a priority again and will land soon!
      • Another thing we ended up talking about was the fact that all desktop installations of Ubuntu are automatically set up to take the HWE kernel when it drops. So no more confusion about whether you’re on a point release or not and what that means.
      • Historically, if you installed with 18.04, you didn’t get the HWE kernel. You could opt in, but required installing a couple of packages. If you installed 18.04.1 or later, you got the HWE kernel automatically.
      • Stuck with it until a little after release when the Gnome desktop really started to grind on me. It was great overall, and fine on my desktop, but on my laptop, the animations were struggling to stay smooth. I’m petty enough to allow that to be a game breaker. I know that to get things to look “nicer” that sometimes comes with more animations. I just figured that a business-class laptop from 2015 would be able to handle it!
  • Ubuntu MATE Features
      • Ubuntu MATE 20.04 features include better support for HiDPI rendering throughout the UI, minimised window previews in the task bar, and new Notification Indicator settings (including a do-not-disturb mode).
      • The distro has decided to drop Compiz and Compton from the default install as they’re no longer considered necessary (and this is an LTS release).
  • There’s also a new GTK frontend for the fwupd application. This will make it easy to check for firmware updates for connected devices and apply said updates if available.
    • Finally, all the goodies present in the upstream MATE desktop 1.24 release are present here.
    • Who on the team has tried it?
    • Moss’ biggest peeve: The icons for “End the Current Session”, “Lock Screen”, and “Turn Off the Device” are not evocative of those features in any way and are tinier than ever. This is a serious problem for visually impaired people, and the icons themselves are an issue for everyone. Question: Is this a MATE issue, or just Ubuntu MATE?
      • Otherwise, this felt like the old, familiar shirt you’ve worn for the last 10 years when you just want to relax. Nothing feels new, everything works.
  • Kubuntu Features
  • For instance, there’s a new colour emoji selector, better theming of GTK apps, refined app and system notifications, and a system tray toggle for the Night Color option.
    • A swathe of updated KDE applications are available through Discover (the software store), including newer versions of Kdenlive, KDE Connect, and Latte Dock.
    • there’s a new default music player in Kubuntu 20.04. The distro has chosen to switch from the Qt-based Cantata to the Qt-based Elisa as of this release.
    • Moss – I installed Kubuntu 20.04 on my Galago Pro. 
    • I tried to use Clementine music player in Kubuntu 20.04, I was using it in the beta. But it seemed to freak out to the point of appearing to wipe my music drive and bombarding me with tons of notifications, but in fact just freaked out all by itself; the drive is fine. That gave me a chance to update my backups. I saw later on YouTube where sneekylinux had the same issue with Clementine on Xubuntu, and switched to Strawberry Player, so I did the same. I’m also having some issues with Konsole in Kubuntu, it looks like it tears under each line almost like thin underlining. Might be my resolution.
    • Leo
      • Moved to Kubuntu 20.04 and have been there ever since. Animations are smooth, no slowdowns that I notice, and TERMINAL. BLUR. So, so so so nice. It’s a touch that I didn’t realize made the terminal feel “premium.”
    • Tony W briefly, only from live USB)
      • Ran just fine on my low powered Dell 7130 tablet.  No performance issues, touchpad/touchscreen etc all work well
  • Xubuntu Features
    • No release notes for new features
    • There is a new dark theme
    • Who on the team has tried it?
  • Ubuntu Budgie Features
    • Chief amongst these is a brand new application menu inspired by Slingshot, the stock app launcher used in elementary OS. The app launcher has an optional ‘power strip’ mode which embeds session management buttons into the app launcher, beside the search box.
    • There’s also a new, native Network Manager applet for managing wired and wi-fi web connections, better HiDPI support, a new ‘desktop layout’ chooser, and better ‘Window Shuffler’ too.
    • App wise the Ubuntu Budgie team has replaced GNOME MPV with its successor, Celluloid, and adds the (really terrific) Drawing app to its default software roster.
  • Ubuntu Studio Features
    • The audio plugin selection is expanded further, with a handful of new plugins included for audio production needs.
    • MyPaint returns to the default install, where it sits alongside the latest version of the GIMP image editor.
    • The Ubuntu Studio Controls utility now lets you assign names to pulseaudio-Jack bridges and has been organized a touch to make it take up less screen space.
  • Who on the team has tried it? (Moss, briefly)
    • Tony W (briefly, only from live USB)
      • 3.6GB ISO is actually not bad at all, for everything it comes with
      • IT LOOKS AMAZING!
      • I am LOVING the selection of pre-installed goodies!
      • Video goodies – It comes with OBS pre-installed, along with both Kdenlive and Openshot
      • Audio – more than you can shake a stick at.  
        • Ardour, Audacity, 
        • Loads of custom soundcard support, including the ENVY24 utility that my old school sound card/audio interface needs
        • Guitarix, rackarack, a looper, multiple drum samplers, the list goes on
        • Multiple media players – VLC, Parole, Xjadeo
        • BONUS – KDE Connect!
  • Lubuntu Features
  • First Lubuntu LTS with LXQt
    • Who on the team has tried it? (Moss attempted to install it but couldn’t get past Calamares UEFI installer requirements for some reason)
  • Ubuntu Kylin Features
    • new Qt-based desktop environment
    • Who on the team has tried it?
  • Ubuntu Cinnamon Respin
    • Features?
    • Who on the team has tried it?
  • Ubuntu Lumina Respin
    • Based on Lumina from TrueOS
  • Overall Issues with Ubuntu 20.04
    • We have commented on the fact that this is a new LTS. Several apps did not work properly in 18.04 which worked fine in 16.04 and had to be reworked, and in this vein several users have noted a problem with Clementine music player. Any others noted?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Londoner (Telegram)
  • K Wisher (mewe)
  • x1cygnus, Scott (Telegram)
  • Dale Miracle (Telegram)
  • Dave W. (Email)
  • Larry P. (Email)

http://170.187.156.171/2020/04/29/mintcast-333-5-efired/

  • John Wallis Security Saga

CHECK THIS OUT!

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4396 mintCast 334.5 – Fossa Fuel https://mintcast.org/mintcast-334-5-fossa-fuel/ Wed, 13 May 2020 04:12:48 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4394 And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we talk about the versions of Ubuntu 20.04 we’re playing with.

And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS: 

Let’s Talk About Ubuntu 20.04 (See OMGubuntu article on 20.04 flavors)

  • Ubuntu (Gnome) Features
    • Linux Kernel 5.4
    • Faster boot speeds
    • OEM logo displayed during boot
    • Improved appearance
    • Dark theme
    • Fractional scaling setting
    • Ships with GNOME 3.36
    • Redesigned login screen
    • New lock screen
    • Snap-based Ubuntu Software app
    • Improved GNOME Shell performance
    • Refined ZFS install support
    • Game mode added to the archives
    • Joe – Installed Ubuntu 20.04 on my 7140 tablet with gnome.  Had some small problems with Gnome and the touchpad left and right click not wanting to work although both did work with an external mouse.  So I installed Cinnamon and Mate and my touchpad worked fine in both.
      • Rotation also worked without a hitch in Gnome and Cinnamon but I did not search for the setting in Mate since I will use that with X2go for remote access
      • Haven’t set up my normal scripting for file movement and sshfs yet but it should work fine. 
      • Noticed a series of games already installed.  Very Windows XP style
      • Turning on touchpad scrolling did not work until after reboot
      • I also didn’t like the touchpad acceleration.  After I adjusted it I did not notice any change until after a reboot and then it was fine
      • Boot times are fast and smooth although there is a device related problem with reboot
      • Looks beautiful and runs smooth
      • Still haven’t installed UKUU and upgraded to the most recent kernel
      • But I did check out snap which is built in.  works great. 
        • Installed the snap for Standard Notes and Mumble and was able to use auto completion with no issues and they immediately were available in the start menu
    • Leo
      • Installed Ubuntu 20.04 Beta on the T450s. This laptop!
      • Tried to stick with the default install on all of the apps I use. This meant installing lots and lots of things via Snap. The only reason I tend to shy away from Snaps is the theming issues (the wonky looking cursor, off-looking GTK Themes, and slow startup times).
      • Talked to Martin Wimpress about these on BDLL last night and got some clarification about where the Ubuntu team is headed. These issues are absolutely on their radar, but got pushed back for some more technical issues that needed to land in 20.04. These issues are now a priority again and will land soon!
      • Another thing we ended up talking about was the fact that all desktop installations of Ubuntu are automatically set up to take the HWE kernel when it drops. So no more confusion about whether you’re on a point release or not and what that means.
      • Historically, if you installed with 18.04, you didn’t get the HWE kernel. You could opt in, but required installing a couple of packages. If you installed 18.04.1 or later, you got the HWE kernel automatically.
      • Stuck with it until a little after release when the Gnome desktop really started to grind on me. It was great overall, and fine on my desktop, but on my laptop, the animations were struggling to stay smooth. I’m petty enough to allow that to be a game breaker. I know that to get things to look “nicer” that sometimes comes with more animations. I just figured that a business-class laptop from 2015 would be able to handle it!
  • Ubuntu MATE Features
      • Ubuntu MATE 20.04 features include better support for HiDPI rendering throughout the UI, minimised window previews in the task bar, and new Notification Indicator settings (including a do-not-disturb mode).
      • The distro has decided to drop Compiz and Compton from the default install as they’re no longer considered necessary (and this is an LTS release).
  • There’s also a new GTK frontend for the fwupd application. This will make it easy to check for firmware updates for connected devices and apply said updates if available.
    • Finally, all the goodies present in the upstream MATE desktop 1.24 release are present here.
    • Who on the team has tried it?
    • Moss’ biggest peeve: The icons for “End the Current Session”, “Lock Screen”, and “Turn Off the Device” are not evocative of those features in any way and are tinier than ever. This is a serious problem for visually impaired people, and the icons themselves are an issue for everyone. Question: Is this a MATE issue, or just Ubuntu MATE?
      • Otherwise, this felt like the old, familiar shirt you’ve worn for the last 10 years when you just want to relax. Nothing feels new, everything works.
  • Kubuntu Features
  • For instance, there’s a new colour emoji selector, better theming of GTK apps, refined app and system notifications, and a system tray toggle for the Night Color option.
    • A swathe of updated KDE applications are available through Discover (the software store), including newer versions of Kdenlive, KDE Connect, and Latte Dock.
    • there’s a new default music player in Kubuntu 20.04. The distro has chosen to switch from the Qt-based Cantata to the Qt-based Elisa as of this release.
    • Moss – I installed Kubuntu 20.04 on my Galago Pro. 
    • I tried to use Clementine music player in Kubuntu 20.04, I was using it in the beta. But it seemed to freak out to the point of appearing to wipe my music drive and bombarding me with tons of notifications, but in fact just freaked out all by itself; the drive is fine. That gave me a chance to update my backups. I saw later on YouTube where sneekylinux had the same issue with Clementine on Xubuntu, and switched to Strawberry Player, so I did the same. I’m also having some issues with Konsole in Kubuntu, it looks like it tears under each line almost like thin underlining. Might be my resolution.
    • Leo
      • Moved to Kubuntu 20.04 and have been there ever since. Animations are smooth, no slowdowns that I notice, and TERMINAL. BLUR. So, so so so nice. It’s a touch that I didn’t realize made the terminal feel “premium.”
    • Tony W briefly, only from live USB)
      • Ran just fine on my low powered Dell 7130 tablet.  No performance issues, touchpad/touchscreen etc all work well
  • Xubuntu Features
    • No release notes for new features
    • There is a new dark theme
    • Who on the team has tried it?
  • Ubuntu Budgie Features
    • Chief amongst these is a brand new application menu inspired by Slingshot, the stock app launcher used in elementary OS. The app launcher has an optional ‘power strip’ mode which embeds session management buttons into the app launcher, beside the search box.
    • There’s also a new, native Network Manager applet for managing wired and wi-fi web connections, better HiDPI support, a new ‘desktop layout’ chooser, and better ‘Window Shuffler’ too.
    • App wise the Ubuntu Budgie team has replaced GNOME MPV with its successor, Celluloid, and adds the (really terrific) Drawing app to its default software roster.
  • Ubuntu Studio Features
    • The audio plugin selection is expanded further, with a handful of new plugins included for audio production needs.
    • MyPaint returns to the default install, where it sits alongside the latest version of the GIMP image editor.
    • The Ubuntu Studio Controls utility now lets you assign names to pulseaudio-Jack bridges and has been organized a touch to make it take up less screen space.
  • Who on the team has tried it? (Moss, briefly)
    • Tony W (briefly, only from live USB)
      • 3.6GB ISO is actually not bad at all, for everything it comes with
      • IT LOOKS AMAZING!
      • I am LOVING the selection of pre-installed goodies!
      • Video goodies – It comes with OBS pre-installed, along with both Kdenlive and Openshot
      • Audio – more than you can shake a stick at.  
        • Ardour, Audacity, 
        • Loads of custom soundcard support, including the ENVY24 utility that my old school sound card/audio interface needs
        • Guitarix, rackarack, a looper, multiple drum samplers, the list goes on
        • Multiple media players – VLC, Parole, Xjadeo
        • BONUS – KDE Connect!
  • Lubuntu Features
  • First Lubuntu LTS with LXQt
    • Who on the team has tried it? (Moss attempted to install it but couldn’t get past Calamares UEFI installer requirements for some reason)
  • Ubuntu Kylin Features
    • new Qt-based desktop environment
    • Who on the team has tried it?
  • Ubuntu Cinnamon Respin
    • Features?
    • Who on the team has tried it?
  • Ubuntu Lumina Respin
    • Based on Lumina from TrueOS
  • Overall Issues with Ubuntu 20.04
    • We have commented on the fact that this is a new LTS. Several apps did not work properly in 18.04 which worked fine in 16.04 and had to be reworked, and in this vein several users have noted a problem with Clementine music player. Any others noted?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Londoner (Telegram)
  • K Wisher (mewe)
  • x1cygnus, Scott (Telegram)
  • Dale Miracle (Telegram)
  • Dave W. (Email)
  • Larry P. (Email)

http://170.187.156.171/2020/04/29/mintcast-333-5-efired/

  • John Wallis Security Saga

CHECK THIS OUT!

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4394 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.
]]> 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.
]]> 4301 mintCast 330 – Debbie Does Beta https://mintcast.org/mintcast-330-debbie-does-beta/ Wed, 11 Mar 2020 05:01:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4276 Then, our news we have plenty of Linux Mint and LMDE news, Raspberry Pi fixes its USB, apt upgrades, and more.
In security, we find out if AMD’s flaws are as bad as Intel’s.
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

Bi-weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> 4276 mintCast 330 – Debbie Does Beta (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-330-debbie-does-beta-mp3/ Wed, 11 Mar 2020 04:57:48 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4272 Then, our news we have plenty of Linux Mint and LMDE news, Raspberry Pi fixes its USB, apt upgrades, and more.
In security, we find out if AMD’s flaws are as bad as Intel’s.
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

Bi-weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> 4272 mintCast 324 – Attack of the Releases https://mintcast.org/mintcast-324-attack-of-the-releases/ Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:35:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4060 Then, in our news, Linux Mint 19.3 is almost here, Canonical has been very busy, New elementaryOS and Firefox, and more
In security, two Linux vulnerabilities and a takeover of PIA goes weird
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo suffers from new computer ills, Tony Hughes works on his cars, Moss fiddles with more distros, it’s reading and repairs for Joe, Tony Watts is rockin’ it, and Josh goes mad and gets an iPhone.

Then, in our news, Linux Mint 19.3 is almost here, Canonical has been very busy, New elementaryOS and Firefox, and more

In security, two Linux vulnerabilities and a takeover of PIA goes weird

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Finally saved up and got the 5700XT I’ve been drooling over for months.
      • Works great in Windows
      • Not so much in Linux Mint. There was some really bad mouse stutter that really impacted desktop performance and made most games unplayable. I was on the latest development Mesa, version 20, but Kernel 5.3.
      • Had a Manjaro Gnome install that I knew was on a later kernel (5.4.2), and 5.4 had some Navi improvements that affected my card. Tried it, and the desktop was smooth, however, nothing I tried would let me play games. They would freeze and never recover. It was so bad that I couldn’t even hop to a new TTY.
      • Installed UKUU on Mint and upgraded to 5.4.2. Mint wins again.
    • While I was troubleshooting, and using Windows to play games, I couldn’t get over how much my workflow was tied to Linux. I’m glad to be back on Mint.
    • Got the wife a new AData SU800 512GB SSD and she gets my hand-me-down Radeon 380x. Both will be a nice upgrade for her.
  • Tony H 
    • Recorded Distrohoppers with Moss, and this went well.
    • Continuing to play with my diecast models and a few more were delivered this week, some of which were in quite good condition for their age so will be added to the display collection until something better comes along. I restored a Matchbox No. 5c Routemaster London Bus this week and just need to add the advertising decals, which I don’t currently have. I am planning to make my own but need both the decal paper and a colour inkjet or laser printer but as a set of decals for one model can be between £2-3 in the long run it will be cheaper to make my own and I could probably make some for sale as well.
    • I also got a portable spray booth and Airbrush with a mini compressor as Birthday gifts this week, I’ve set up the spray booth in my office/workshop in the spare bedroom and plan to test it out next week before heading up to Scotland until Xmas eve to visit my step son and brother in law.
    • Having new UPVC windows fitted to my garage in preparation for turning it into the Makerspace Workshop. When we lost our last venue we lost the ability to use the Laser cutter and 3D printer as we can not install these at our current meeting venue of one of our local libraries.
    • Joined the BDLL Euro show last night.     
  • Moss 
    • We had a great Episode 008 for Distrohoppers’ Digest, available now at your favorite podcatcher or from our website, http://distrohoppersdigest.blogspot.com. This will be our last one for the year, and our next episode will be more laid back, although I’ve already installed KDE neon on my test machine.
    • I attempted to install Haiku OS on my Kudu, but learned it does not install to UEFI, so I broke out the still-unposted IdeaPad 110. I got to a certain point, and ran into informational vacuum, needing to know how to prepare the partition. I did get a nice response from the team, but have not been able to get back to it.  I learned a lot just getting that far, and maybe I’ll go on from there soon.
    • I attempted to install  Peppermint OS 10 to my test laptop. The partitioning failed. The installer crashed the second try. I reinstalled KDE neon.
    • Sabayon was refusing to load the desktop lately. I could not log in as my username, but logging in as root got me a full-screen terminal. I posted the issue to the Sabayon forum and got a quick reply. Stating that I needed to reload lightdm, with instructions as to how. That worked. As I doubt any of our listeners are running Sabayon, I won’t post the commands I used to fix the issue.
    • I did some Timeshift backups today. I keep infrequent backups of everything except Sabayon (haven’t figured out how to load Timeshift through Entropy). As part of my efforts today, I learned that my Galago Pro identifies the external backup drive as sdb, and then finds I don’t have an sdb5, which is where my Linux Mint is installed (Pearl on sdb3). So I need to keep it unplugged until after boot, or I can’t boot to either Mint or Pearl. Odd that it isn’t identified as sdcX…
    • I had a pretty good birthday, with a pleasant gift from my mother and a lot of good wishes, plus extra hours being offered at work. I have stopped looking for work, with only one possible job not yet offered. Also, a great Thanksgiving and even a Holiday Party, with my friends at the Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Education Center in Liberty Hill, TN. My wife and I feel we have found a new family.
    • And I received a donation from one of our listeners, David Lindberg. Thank you, David!  I purchased some much-needed USB-C cables.
  • Joe
    • Finished relistening to the Dresden files.  Love that series. Can’t recommend enough to everyone
      • Very well read
      • Good long series that takes some time to get through even at 4x
      • Too long since the last one but the author has had to work through a lot of issues and from what I understand the wait should not be long now.
    • Also went through the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony
      • This is a very convoluted series where all the books are very intertwined
      • Well read and well written
    • Need to catch up on Rick and Morty new season.
    • Behind on all the tv shows.
    • Bought some LG HBS 510’s 
      • Kinda old school
      • ordered 4 for 15 dollars
      • 1 no power show fully charged
      • Battery is working fine.  Can’t find a problem with the switch.  could check all the wires across for continuity.  But won’t. need the extra parts anyway
      • One of the sides went on another set
      • 1 neither side works but connects and pause play works
        • This will probably just require shortening of the cables
      • 1 left side out 
        • obvious, the casing was cracked around the earpiece and I could see that one of the connections was off.  soldered back on and glued the casing together with jb weld. It works great may go back and fill the hole with JB Weld 
      • 1 right side out, as in it is not there.  Another cracked casing but the speaker fell off
        • Was able to take one side from the one that wont turn on and swap it in.  now it just plain works
      • Should be able to fix 3.   
      • had extra glue so also glued one of the 820s with a broken band.
        • But it did not hold very well even after a couple of days worth of drying
      • The 510s are smaller and have fewer buttons than most of the ones that I have worked with but are still usable.  the sound is not terrible and they are not too difficult to work on. a single large mic that will require more testing.  Battery life is middling. the materials are a bit flimsy considering some of the fixes that I had to put in but they are also the lightest neckband headset I have used.  No one has complained about the call quality and I have not had any issue on my side of a call. the simplistic controls do take a bit of getting used to, especially when I am still switching amongst other headsets with a more standard setup.
    • Ordered another Dell Venue 7130 for 40 dollars.  Don’t know much about it yet other than it is missing the M.2 hard drive.  But it is the i5 version so it is either 4 or 8gb version.  
      • I have extra drives for it
      • Will find out if it has a good battery
      • And a good charging port
      • But there are 2 charging ports so if the usb one is bad I may have to either buy a dock or one of the high powered ones that use the same port
      • If I get it working I will either turn around and sell it or give it to one of my kids.
    • Fixed my dad’s old Toshiba Satellite L755-S5110
      • It had this problem where during startup it would get past the splash screen and start beeping horrendously
      • Figured it was the ram so I pulled the ram sticks one at a time and tested with less ram and known good ram still the same issue
      • So I removed the keyboard and started it up.  Worked fine.
      • Tested rehooking the keyboard while it was booted and it is always triggering some keys.
      • May order a new keyboard or may just use it as a settop box.
      • Second gen core i3 but still usable.  
      • Does need a new battery
      • But other than that, it would cost 20 dollars, 13 for the keyboard and 7 for the power supply to have a working laptop
      • Like 12 dollars for a battery.
    • Also was having a problem with my garage computer randomly shutting off.
      • Hard to isolate the problem because days could go by without it happening
      • After much testing of peripherals to find the issue I discovered that it was a problem with my Thinkpad USB 3.0 docking station
      • So I am looking for a decent low cost powered replacement (probably a couple of them) 
      • Preferably 7 ports and sub 10 dollars but I am not finding anything that fits the bill. 
    • Bought a Samsung gear fit2
      • Not sure how much I like it.
      • Heart rate is iffy 
      • Step count I will have to track more
  • Tony W
    • Busy as ever with music.  
      • Formed a band of my colleagues at the office and we played at the company holiday party.  It was a resounding success.  
      • Speaking of holiday party… will be doing to my wife’s work party toward end of our show, may have to drop a bit early
      • Also solo gigs, rock band, church band…
    • Mobile recording setup:
      • Dell 7130
      • Presonus Audiobox USB
        • Metal – built like a tank
        • Works out of the box with Linux, no problems whatsoever
        • Very light and portable
        • Power draws from USB – no power plug required
      • Unidirectional microphone (Either my Behringer or a borrowed Shure SM58 – doesn’t seem to be a dramatic difference)
        • I use a unidirectional mic to avoid picking up noise in my house (space heater and server right next to me, not to mention anything else in the rest of the house, kids, dogs…)
    • Dell 7130
      • Spent more time with the machine after it being a bit idle for a while.  I tend to spend a lot of time *obsessively* getting things to work like I want, and then walk away from them after that is accomplished.
      • Batteries in both tablet and keyboard actually seem to be in pretty good shape.  Linux mint indicates keyboard will last nearly 3 hours and the tablet about 7.5 hrs (have not tested this, no idea if will actually get that much, but so far can confirm the keyboard will last 2+ hrs charging the tablet)
      • Keyboard is very glitchy.  Have to dock multiple times before the tablet will recognize keyboard/touchpad (even though battery display seems to update every time)
      • Ordered a tablet keyboard cover, maybe less issues.  Will report back on that
    • New work laptop
      • Old: Dell E6430
        • I used that laptop for 7+ years.  IT dept delayed in replacing it as it was up to spec after various upgrades
        • Processor 3rd gen i7, 8GB Ram, 500GB SSD, new battery…
        • Replaced due to touchpad button issues (may have been a Windows only problem)
      • New: Thinkpad T480.  Great machine
        • I7 model
        • I will need a USB C dock now, for working at home
  • Josh
    • Finished my mock exams (finally) after two weeks. Sorry for the absence but they say school comes first (whatever that means).
    • Released Issue 6 of micro:mag, our most popular issue yet where we got 2000 readers in the first 48 hours.
    • Got myself some 8BitDo Bluetooth Stereo Speakers after winning a gift card during a Black Friday competition. Really good for the price and work well with Linux.
    • Last time I was on the show, I was having some trouble with Google after my Pixel 3 got RMAed.
      • 3 Months of battling with them
      • Support engineers cut me off the phone a few times
      • They can’t contact the refunds team
      • Google support is the worst
      • I really don’t want to be negative, but this has happened to many other customers too
      • We contacted the retailer where I got the phone from, John Lewis, who refunded me after trying Google support from themselves and seeing how bad it was.
    • I ended up getting the iPhone 11 Pro on a really good contract with o2 here in the UK after putting some of the refund money towards it.
      • iOS is really nice
      • Camera is incredible, especially the 4k60 video
      • Smooth performance
      • 2 Day Battery life
      • Apple devices are still too expensive and i’d never buy one outright but luckily thanks to a mix of Black Friday deals and putting a bit of money upfront from what I did have. 

THE NEWS: 

  • Linux Mint 19.3 Images Being Tested
    • Images showed up on Friday, marked as testing. Release is imminent!
  • Canonical announces Ubuntu Pro for AWS
    • These images, for a little extra money, provide 10 years of support, Kernel Livepatching, Compliance profiles for things like HIPAA and PCI, and AWS Security integration.
  • Ubuntu AWS Will Use A Rolling Kernel
    • For non Ubuntu Pro instances, you’ll still be getting some goodies.
    • The rolling kernel is the typical hardware enablement kernel with AWS features built in, and all 18.04 instances will be upgraded to 5.0 from 4.15 by default.
    • You can test early to be sure things will work
      • sudo apt install linux-aws-edge
    • Or you can force your instances to stay on 4.15.
      • sudo apt install linux-aws-lts-18.04
  • Canonical Becomes Feature Sponsor for WSLConf
    • Hayden Barnes, Developer Advocate, Ubuntu on WSL, Canonical
  • Nginx offices raided for copyright dispute with Rambler (Moss)
  • Open Source Music Notations Software Musescore 3.3 Released! (Tony W)
    • For playing, printing and creating sheet music
    • Free but can use either a free or premium account for sharing with Musescore community
  • elementary OS 5.1 Hera
    • A new Greeter and first-install process
    • Flatpak Support
    • Accessibility being treated as normal options rather than things shoved away into a corner.
    • Ubuntu’s HWE 5.0 Kernel.
    • Some app improvements
    • If you’re upgrading from Juno, you won’t get the new kernel automatically. For that, run:
      • sudo apt install –install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-18.04
  • Firefox 71
    • Picture in Picture for videos! (Windows only for now. Linux and Mac in Firefox 72)
    • Native MP3 decoding on Windows, Linux, and macOS
    • More visible tracking protection
    • Improvements to Lockwise
    • Kiosk mode
  • Zorin OS 15.1 released (Moss)
  • Ubuntu Cinnamon first release (not official flavor yet)
  • MS Teams Is Now On Linux (second link)
  • Mac Pro is here (Josh)
    • Probably one of the most powerful consumer computers out there
    • Comes with a price for the top spec – $52,748.00
      • 2.5GHz 28‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
      • 1.5TB (12x128GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
      • Two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo with 2x32GB of HBM2 memory each
      • 4TB SSD storage
      • Apple Afterburner card
      • Stainless steel frame with wheels
      • Magic Mouse 2 + Magic Trackpad 2
      • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English
    • Base spec is $6,000 which is very expensive for what you get
      • 3.5GHz 8‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
      • 32GB (4x8GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
      • Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
      • 256GB SSD storage
      • Stainless steel frame with feet
      • Magic Mouse 2
      • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • <Moss>Remember the PIA purchase by Kape Technologies? Kape is a renamed malware company owned by a former Israeli spy (not from right wing sources)
  • New Linux Vulnerability Lets Attackers Hijack VPN Connections
    • Very in depth, but the short and sweet of it is that using this vulnerability allows an attacker to inject packets regardless of encryption.
    • People with a version of systemd released after Nov 28th, 2019 are affected. However, more distributions that aren’t on systemd are affected: Devuan, Void, FreeBSD.
    • A temporary fix would be to block bogon IP addresses. Essentially bogus or fake IPs. See: https://ipinfo.io/bogon 
  • Two malicious Python scripts caught stealing SSH and GPG keys
    • A result of typosquatting. Essentially naming libraries visually similar to confuse people into using the library.
    • Python3-dateutil was spoofing dateutil
    • JeIlyfish (the first l is replaced with a capital I) was spoofing Jellyfish. The spoofed JeIlyfish libraries were where the malicious code resided, and python3-dateutil would call the malicious JeIlyfish library.

Once the libraries are used, keys are sent to xxx://68.183.212.246:32258

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Next Episode will be December 29, 2019, 2pm Central US time.

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!)
]]> 4060 mintCast 324 – Attack of the Releases (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-324-attack-of-the-releases-mp3/ Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:35:14 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4055 Then, in our news, Linux Mint 19.3 is almost here, Canonical has been very busy, New elementaryOS and Firefox, and more
In security, two Linux vulnerabilities and a takeover of PIA goes weird
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo suffers from new computer ills, Tony Hughes works on his cars, Moss fiddles with more distros, it’s reading and repairs for Joe, Tony Watts is rockin’ it, and Josh goes mad and gets an iPhone.

Then, in our news, Linux Mint 19.3 is almost here, Canonical has been very busy, New elementaryOS and Firefox, and more

In security, two Linux vulnerabilities and a takeover of PIA goes weird

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Finally saved up and got the 5700XT I’ve been drooling over for months.
      • Works great in Windows
      • Not so much in Linux Mint. There was some really bad mouse stutter that really impacted desktop performance and made most games unplayable. I was on the latest development Mesa, version 20, but Kernel 5.3.
      • Had a Manjaro Gnome install that I knew was on a later kernel (5.4.2), and 5.4 had some Navi improvements that affected my card. Tried it, and the desktop was smooth, however, nothing I tried would let me play games. They would freeze and never recover. It was so bad that I couldn’t even hop to a new TTY.
      • Installed UKUU on Mint and upgraded to 5.4.2. Mint wins again.
    • While I was troubleshooting, and using Windows to play games, I couldn’t get over how much my workflow was tied to Linux. I’m glad to be back on Mint.
    • Got the wife a new AData SU800 512GB SSD and she gets my hand-me-down Radeon 380x. Both will be a nice upgrade for her.
  • Tony H 
    • Recorded Distrohoppers with Moss, and this went well.
    • Continuing to play with my diecast models and a few more were delivered this week, some of which were in quite good condition for their age so will be added to the display collection until something better comes along. I restored a Matchbox No. 5c Routemaster London Bus this week and just need to add the advertising decals, which I don’t currently have. I am planning to make my own but need both the decal paper and a colour inkjet or laser printer but as a set of decals for one model can be between £2-3 in the long run it will be cheaper to make my own and I could probably make some for sale as well.
    • I also got a portable spray booth and Airbrush with a mini compressor as Birthday gifts this week, I’ve set up the spray booth in my office/workshop in the spare bedroom and plan to test it out next week before heading up to Scotland until Xmas eve to visit my step son and brother in law.
    • Having new UPVC windows fitted to my garage in preparation for turning it into the Makerspace Workshop. When we lost our last venue we lost the ability to use the Laser cutter and 3D printer as we can not install these at our current meeting venue of one of our local libraries.
    • Joined the BDLL Euro show last night.     
  • Moss 
    • We had a great Episode 008 for Distrohoppers’ Digest, available now at your favorite podcatcher or from our website, http://distrohoppersdigest.blogspot.com. This will be our last one for the year, and our next episode will be more laid back, although I’ve already installed KDE neon on my test machine.
    • I attempted to install Haiku OS on my Kudu, but learned it does not install to UEFI, so I broke out the still-unposted IdeaPad 110. I got to a certain point, and ran into informational vacuum, needing to know how to prepare the partition. I did get a nice response from the team, but have not been able to get back to it.  I learned a lot just getting that far, and maybe I’ll go on from there soon.
    • I attempted to install  Peppermint OS 10 to my test laptop. The partitioning failed. The installer crashed the second try. I reinstalled KDE neon.
    • Sabayon was refusing to load the desktop lately. I could not log in as my username, but logging in as root got me a full-screen terminal. I posted the issue to the Sabayon forum and got a quick reply. Stating that I needed to reload lightdm, with instructions as to how. That worked. As I doubt any of our listeners are running Sabayon, I won’t post the commands I used to fix the issue.
    • I did some Timeshift backups today. I keep infrequent backups of everything except Sabayon (haven’t figured out how to load Timeshift through Entropy). As part of my efforts today, I learned that my Galago Pro identifies the external backup drive as sdb, and then finds I don’t have an sdb5, which is where my Linux Mint is installed (Pearl on sdb3). So I need to keep it unplugged until after boot, or I can’t boot to either Mint or Pearl. Odd that it isn’t identified as sdcX…
    • I had a pretty good birthday, with a pleasant gift from my mother and a lot of good wishes, plus extra hours being offered at work. I have stopped looking for work, with only one possible job not yet offered. Also, a great Thanksgiving and even a Holiday Party, with my friends at the Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Education Center in Liberty Hill, TN. My wife and I feel we have found a new family.
    • And I received a donation from one of our listeners, David Lindberg. Thank you, David!  I purchased some much-needed USB-C cables.
  • Joe
    • Finished relistening to the Dresden files.  Love that series. Can’t recommend enough to everyone
      • Very well read
      • Good long series that takes some time to get through even at 4x
      • Too long since the last one but the author has had to work through a lot of issues and from what I understand the wait should not be long now.
    • Also went through the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony
      • This is a very convoluted series where all the books are very intertwined
      • Well read and well written
    • Need to catch up on Rick and Morty new season.
    • Behind on all the tv shows.
    • Bought some LG HBS 510’s 
      • Kinda old school
      • ordered 4 for 15 dollars
      • 1 no power show fully charged
      • Battery is working fine.  Can’t find a problem with the switch.  could check all the wires across for continuity.  But won’t. need the extra parts anyway
      • One of the sides went on another set
      • 1 neither side works but connects and pause play works
        • This will probably just require shortening of the cables
      • 1 left side out 
        • obvious, the casing was cracked around the earpiece and I could see that one of the connections was off.  soldered back on and glued the casing together with jb weld. It works great may go back and fill the hole with JB Weld 
      • 1 right side out, as in it is not there.  Another cracked casing but the speaker fell off
        • Was able to take one side from the one that wont turn on and swap it in.  now it just plain works
      • Should be able to fix 3.   
      • had extra glue so also glued one of the 820s with a broken band.
        • But it did not hold very well even after a couple of days worth of drying
      • The 510s are smaller and have fewer buttons than most of the ones that I have worked with but are still usable.  the sound is not terrible and they are not too difficult to work on. a single large mic that will require more testing.  Battery life is middling. the materials are a bit flimsy considering some of the fixes that I had to put in but they are also the lightest neckband headset I have used.  No one has complained about the call quality and I have not had any issue on my side of a call. the simplistic controls do take a bit of getting used to, especially when I am still switching amongst other headsets with a more standard setup.
    • Ordered another Dell Venue 7130 for 40 dollars.  Don’t know much about it yet other than it is missing the M.2 hard drive.  But it is the i5 version so it is either 4 or 8gb version.  
      • I have extra drives for it
      • Will find out if it has a good battery
      • And a good charging port
      • But there are 2 charging ports so if the usb one is bad I may have to either buy a dock or one of the high powered ones that use the same port
      • If I get it working I will either turn around and sell it or give it to one of my kids.
    • Fixed my dad’s old Toshiba Satellite L755-S5110
      • It had this problem where during startup it would get past the splash screen and start beeping horrendously
      • Figured it was the ram so I pulled the ram sticks one at a time and tested with less ram and known good ram still the same issue
      • So I removed the keyboard and started it up.  Worked fine.
      • Tested rehooking the keyboard while it was booted and it is always triggering some keys.
      • May order a new keyboard or may just use it as a settop box.
      • Second gen core i3 but still usable.  
      • Does need a new battery
      • But other than that, it would cost 20 dollars, 13 for the keyboard and 7 for the power supply to have a working laptop
      • Like 12 dollars for a battery.
    • Also was having a problem with my garage computer randomly shutting off.
      • Hard to isolate the problem because days could go by without it happening
      • After much testing of peripherals to find the issue I discovered that it was a problem with my Thinkpad USB 3.0 docking station
      • So I am looking for a decent low cost powered replacement (probably a couple of them) 
      • Preferably 7 ports and sub 10 dollars but I am not finding anything that fits the bill. 
    • Bought a Samsung gear fit2
      • Not sure how much I like it.
      • Heart rate is iffy 
      • Step count I will have to track more
  • Tony W
    • Busy as ever with music.  
      • Formed a band of my colleagues at the office and we played at the company holiday party.  It was a resounding success.  
      • Speaking of holiday party… will be doing to my wife’s work party toward end of our show, may have to drop a bit early
      • Also solo gigs, rock band, church band…
    • Mobile recording setup:
      • Dell 7130
      • Presonus Audiobox USB
        • Metal – built like a tank
        • Works out of the box with Linux, no problems whatsoever
        • Very light and portable
        • Power draws from USB – no power plug required
      • Unidirectional microphone (Either my Behringer or a borrowed Shure SM58 – doesn’t seem to be a dramatic difference)
        • I use a unidirectional mic to avoid picking up noise in my house (space heater and server right next to me, not to mention anything else in the rest of the house, kids, dogs…)
    • Dell 7130
      • Spent more time with the machine after it being a bit idle for a while.  I tend to spend a lot of time *obsessively* getting things to work like I want, and then walk away from them after that is accomplished.
      • Batteries in both tablet and keyboard actually seem to be in pretty good shape.  Linux mint indicates keyboard will last nearly 3 hours and the tablet about 7.5 hrs (have not tested this, no idea if will actually get that much, but so far can confirm the keyboard will last 2+ hrs charging the tablet)
      • Keyboard is very glitchy.  Have to dock multiple times before the tablet will recognize keyboard/touchpad (even though battery display seems to update every time)
      • Ordered a tablet keyboard cover, maybe less issues.  Will report back on that
    • New work laptop
      • Old: Dell E6430
        • I used that laptop for 7+ years.  IT dept delayed in replacing it as it was up to spec after various upgrades
        • Processor 3rd gen i7, 8GB Ram, 500GB SSD, new battery…
        • Replaced due to touchpad button issues (may have been a Windows only problem)
      • New: Thinkpad T480.  Great machine
        • I7 model
        • I will need a USB C dock now, for working at home
  • Josh
    • Finished my mock exams (finally) after two weeks. Sorry for the absence but they say school comes first (whatever that means).
    • Released Issue 6 of micro:mag, our most popular issue yet where we got 2000 readers in the first 48 hours.
    • Got myself some 8BitDo Bluetooth Stereo Speakers after winning a gift card during a Black Friday competition. Really good for the price and work well with Linux.
    • Last time I was on the show, I was having some trouble with Google after my Pixel 3 got RMAed.
      • 3 Months of battling with them
      • Support engineers cut me off the phone a few times
      • They can’t contact the refunds team
      • Google support is the worst
      • I really don’t want to be negative, but this has happened to many other customers too
      • We contacted the retailer where I got the phone from, John Lewis, who refunded me after trying Google support from themselves and seeing how bad it was.
    • I ended up getting the iPhone 11 Pro on a really good contract with o2 here in the UK after putting some of the refund money towards it.
      • iOS is really nice
      • Camera is incredible, especially the 4k60 video
      • Smooth performance
      • 2 Day Battery life
      • Apple devices are still too expensive and i’d never buy one outright but luckily thanks to a mix of Black Friday deals and putting a bit of money upfront from what I did have. 

THE NEWS: 

  • Linux Mint 19.3 Images Being Tested
    • Images showed up on Friday, marked as testing. Release is imminent!
  • Canonical announces Ubuntu Pro for AWS
    • These images, for a little extra money, provide 10 years of support, Kernel Livepatching, Compliance profiles for things like HIPAA and PCI, and AWS Security integration.
  • Ubuntu AWS Will Use A Rolling Kernel
    • For non Ubuntu Pro instances, you’ll still be getting some goodies.
    • The rolling kernel is the typical hardware enablement kernel with AWS features built in, and all 18.04 instances will be upgraded to 5.0 from 4.15 by default.
    • You can test early to be sure things will work
      • sudo apt install linux-aws-edge
    • Or you can force your instances to stay on 4.15.
      • sudo apt install linux-aws-lts-18.04
  • Canonical Becomes Feature Sponsor for WSLConf
    • Hayden Barnes, Developer Advocate, Ubuntu on WSL, Canonical
  • Nginx offices raided for copyright dispute with Rambler (Moss)
  • Open Source Music Notations Software Musescore 3.3 Released! (Tony W)
    • For playing, printing and creating sheet music
    • Free but can use either a free or premium account for sharing with Musescore community
  • elementary OS 5.1 Hera
    • A new Greeter and first-install process
    • Flatpak Support
    • Accessibility being treated as normal options rather than things shoved away into a corner.
    • Ubuntu’s HWE 5.0 Kernel.
    • Some app improvements
    • If you’re upgrading from Juno, you won’t get the new kernel automatically. For that, run:
      • sudo apt install –install-recommends linux-generic-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-18.04
  • Firefox 71
    • Picture in Picture for videos! (Windows only for now. Linux and Mac in Firefox 72)
    • Native MP3 decoding on Windows, Linux, and macOS
    • More visible tracking protection
    • Improvements to Lockwise
    • Kiosk mode
  • Zorin OS 15.1 released (Moss)
  • Ubuntu Cinnamon first release (not official flavor yet)
  • MS Teams Is Now On Linux (second link)
  • Mac Pro is here (Josh)
    • Probably one of the most powerful consumer computers out there
    • Comes with a price for the top spec – $52,748.00
      • 2.5GHz 28‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
      • 1.5TB (12x128GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
      • Two Radeon Pro Vega II Duo with 2x32GB of HBM2 memory each
      • 4TB SSD storage
      • Apple Afterburner card
      • Stainless steel frame with wheels
      • Magic Mouse 2 + Magic Trackpad 2
      • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English
    • Base spec is $6,000 which is very expensive for what you get
      • 3.5GHz 8‑core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.0GHz
      • 32GB (4x8GB) of DDR4 ECC memory
      • Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory
      • 256GB SSD storage
      • Stainless steel frame with feet
      • Magic Mouse 2
      • Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad – US English

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • <Moss>Remember the PIA purchase by Kape Technologies? Kape is a renamed malware company owned by a former Israeli spy (not from right wing sources)
  • New Linux Vulnerability Lets Attackers Hijack VPN Connections
    • Very in depth, but the short and sweet of it is that using this vulnerability allows an attacker to inject packets regardless of encryption.
    • People with a version of systemd released after Nov 28th, 2019 are affected. However, more distributions that aren’t on systemd are affected: Devuan, Void, FreeBSD.
    • A temporary fix would be to block bogon IP addresses. Essentially bogus or fake IPs. See: https://ipinfo.io/bogon 
  • Two malicious Python scripts caught stealing SSH and GPG keys
    • A result of typosquatting. Essentially naming libraries visually similar to confuse people into using the library.
    • Python3-dateutil was spoofing dateutil
    • JeIlyfish (the first l is replaced with a capital I) was spoofing Jellyfish. The spoofed JeIlyfish libraries were where the malicious code resided, and python3-dateutil would call the malicious JeIlyfish library.

Once the libraries are used, keys are sent to xxx://68.183.212.246:32258

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Next Episode will be December 29, 2019, 2pm Central US time.

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!)
]]> 4055 mintCast 278 – Talking about GCC https://mintcast.org/mintcast-278-talking-aboug-gcc/ Tue, 19 Dec 2017 02:43:55 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3327 278]

Download

Bi-weekly Wanderings:

  • Isaac sets up his OnionPi and hates his cell phone.
  • Rob was busy with family and church, but did manage to switch cell phone providers from Ting to T-Mobile.

News:

Linux Innards:

Vibrations from the Ether:

  • Thanks to everyone that emailed us or left comments on the webpage.
  • Contribute to archive.org!

Check this out!:

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

  • Send us your bumper or intro or outro music.
  • Next time we’ll be discussing last year’s and new year’s predictions.
  • Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone….we’ll be back in 3 weeks!

More Information:

Hosts: Rob and Isaac
Live Stream every other Monday 6:00 p.m.(Central): mintcast.org/livestream

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

]]> 3327 mintCast 278 (MP3) – Talking about GCC https://mintcast.org/mintcast-278-mp3-talking-about-gcc/ Tue, 19 Dec 2017 02:26:15 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3325 278]

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]]> 3325 mintCast 264 – Building Linux Woes https://mintcast.org/mintcast-264-building-linux-woes/ Wed, 05 Apr 2017 01:56:32 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3258 264]

Download

News:

Main Topic:

  • Rob talks about the problems and solutions he encountered as he works his way through Chapter 6 of building Linux From Scratch. Isaac does a quick run through of Chapters 7 and 8, while realizing he needs to get started on BLFS (Beyond Linux From Scratch).

Tips & Websites:

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

  • No announcements

More Information:

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

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

]]> 3258 mintCast 264 (MP3) – Building Linux Woes https://mintcast.org/mintcast-264-mp3-building-linux-woes/ Wed, 05 Apr 2017 01:50:15 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3256 264]

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]]> 3256 mintCast 230 – Linux Mint 17.2 KDE & Xfce https://mintcast.org/mintcast-230-linux-mint-17-2-kde-xfce/ Fri, 14 Aug 2015 01:50:41 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2996 230]

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Introduction:

News:

Main Topic: Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela – KDE & Xfce

Website:

Tip:

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

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

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

]]> 2996 mintCast 216 – Linux Mint 17.1 KDE and Xfce https://mintcast.org/mintcast-216-linux-mint-17-1-kde-and-xfce/ Fri, 16 Jan 2015 02:32:42 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2921 216] Download

News:

Linux Mint 17.1 KDE and Xfce Editions

Website:

Tip:

  • sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata – you can use this command to quickly change your timezone.  It runs an ncurses based utility that harkens back to the days of text based Linux installers.

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

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

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

]]> 2921 mintCast 204 – Mint 17 KDE & Xfce https://mintcast.org/mintcast-204-mint-17-kde-xfce/ Thu, 03 Jul 2014 20:07:52 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2842 204] Download

News:

  • Qiana ‘v2’ ISO respins issued by Mint team (linuxmint.com)
  • Is the KDE desktop stagnant? Jack Wallen thinks so (techrepublic.com)
  • Where is the KDE desktop going? (dot.kde.org)
  • Intuit beats a patent troll in a case that could have farther reaching consequences (arstechnica.com)
  • The latest top 500 super-computer list is out and Linux dominates (linux.com)
  • Don’t forget to download your UbuntuOne files before July 31st (softpedia.com)

Main Topic: Mint 17 KDE & Xfce

  • Mint 17 KDE (KDE)
  • Mint 17 Xfce (Xfce)

Website:

Tip:

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, Joe
Live Stream every other Monday 7:00 p.m. or Sunday 2:00 p.m.(Central): mintcast.org/livestream

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

]]> 2842 mintCast 188 – Mint 16 KDE and Xfce https://mintcast.org/mintcast-188-mint-16-kde-and-xfce/ Fri, 10 Jan 2014 03:51:44 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2737 188] Download

PreShow Music:

News:

  • Petra backports available in Linux Mint 13 – The most significant improvements in Petra are being backported to Maya. Among other things, this gives Linux Mint 13 LTS users access to the following packages: MDM 1.4, Cinnamon 2.0, MATE 1.6, The latest versions of mintwelcome, mintstick, mintnanny, mintupload, mintupdate, mintinstall, mintsystem, mintmenu and mintdesktop. (blog.linuxmint.com)
  • Cinnamon: graphics tablet support needs testing – We’ve begun re-porting graphics tablet (wacom) support back into Cinnamon. (segfault.linuxmint.com)
  • Linux Wins the Desktop in 2014 and 3 More Bold Predictions – Linux won, the penguin has achieved world domination, and the usual commentarians completely missed it even after years of predicting it. (linux.com)
  • Why didn’t Linux win on the desktop? – Heady forecasts showing Linux would become a major player on the desktop. While the prognostications proved correct for server and embedded operating systems, what happened on the desktop? (zdnet.com)
  • Valve Already Has A Dozen Steam Machine Partners – Valve has announced their first 12 partners that intend to bring Steam Machines to the marketplace this year. (phoronix.com)
  • GNU Octave 3.8 With Its GUI Officially Announced – GNU Octave 3.8 was officially released on 31 December 2013 to close out the year. Octave 3.8 has its own graphical user-interface and uses OpenGL in conjunction with FLTK widgets. (phoronix.com)
  • Panasonic will bring Firefox OS to your smart TV this year – Firefox OS won’t be confined to small devices for much longer. Panasonic has announced a partnership with Mozilla that will see it launch Firefox OS-powered smart TVs and other “smart screens.” (engadget.com)

Main Topic:

Podcast Announcements:

  • Jonathan Nadeau has launched an indiegogo campaign to help bring digital sight to the vision impaired. Further developing the Orca screen reader for vision impaired users to access a computer. (www.igg.me/at/orca)
  • Linux in the Hamshack (lhspodcast.info) has also kicked off an indigogo campaign to cover some of the costs of participating in the Dayton Hamvention this year. Through a bi-weekly audio podcast, live streaming Internet radio show, community event sponsorship and general outreach, Linux in the Ham Shack (LHS) exposes users to Free Software, and amateur radio to everyone. (igg.me/at/lhs2014)

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, Joe
Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org/livestream
Contact Us:

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

Credits:
Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast bumpers were provided by Oscar.

]]> 2737 mintCast 168 – Mint 15 Xfce and KDE https://mintcast.org/mintcast-168-mint-15-xfce-and-kde/ Fri, 26 Jul 2013 02:20:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2595 168] Download

News:

The Main Topic: Mint 15 Xfce & Mint 15 KDE

Tip & Website in one:

  • Conky Manager is a graphical front-end for managing Conky config files. It provides options to start/stop, browse and edit Conky themes installed on the system. Packages are currently available in Launchpad for Ubuntu and derivatives. (teejeetech.blogspot.com)

Podcast Announcements:

  • Remember that Reglue is holding an indiegogo fundraiser to secure funding for operations for the coming year. You can help out by making any donation you can afford. (indiegogo.com)

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, James
Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org
Contact Us:

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

Credits:
Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast bumpers were provided by Oscar.

]]> 2595 mintCast 156: Ken Starks https://mintcast.org/mintcast-156-ken-starks/ Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:01:01 +0000 http://www.mintcast.org/?p=2422 Listen: mintcast156.mp3 or mintcast156.ogg

News:

The Main Topic:

  • An interview with Ken Starks.

Featured Websites:

Featured Tip:

Announcements:

  • The new LinuxBasix podcast has released three episodes, avaiable here: (LinuxBasix.com )
  • Feedback welcome here: (LinuxBasix Forums )
  • Thanks to Brad Alexander for this link to a map of the Linux Distribution Timeline: (Wikimedia.org )

More Information:

Hosts:: Rob, Scott, James

Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org

Contact Us:

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

Credits: Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast’s bumpers were provided by Oscar.

]]> 2422 Episode 106: Mint 12 KDE vs Netrunner Dryland 4.1 https://mintcast.org/episode-106-mint-12-kde-vs-netrunner-dryland-4-1/ Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:03:12 +0000 http://www.mintcast.org/?p=1948

News:

  • Nvidia joins the Linux Foundation (ZDNet)
  • Raspberry PI News: Official O/S, Fedora PI remix available for download… (OStatic)
  • …and Production hits snag causing delay in delivery (Raspberry PI)
  • Recent Developments in Oracle vs Google (ITWorld)

The Main Topic:

  • Linux Mint 12 KDE vs Netrunner 4.1 Dryland

Featured Website & Tip (all in one!):

Your browser does not support the audio element.

MP3:
OGG:

More Information:

Hosts:: James, Rob, Scott, HarrisonLive Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org

Subscribe: [iTunes] [Zune] [RSS MP3] [RSS OGG]

Contact Us:

Forum: forums.linuxmint.com

Email: mintcast@mintcast.org

Phone:1-832-514-2278

Twitter: @mintCast @Linux_Mint @3dbeef @jamescoyner @txhawkins

IRC: irc.spotchat.org – #mintcast

Google+: mintCast

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

Credits: Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast’s bumpers were provided by Oscar.

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