LMDE – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Sun, 28 Sep 2025 22:47:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png LMDE – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false episodic CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast LMDE – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 469 – Bill Loves Windows https://mintcast.org/469-bill-loves-windows/ Sun, 28 Sep 2025 22:45:46 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7666 First up in the news: LMDE 7 ‘Gigi” BETA released

In security and privacy: Mississippi enforces Age Assurance Law, NPM suffers a security breach.

Then in our Wanderings, Joe works with Proxmox, and Openmediavault, Jim Troubleshoots hard disks, Majid goes back to work, and Bill works on his "Immich."

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

]]> First up in the news: LMDE 7 ‘Gigi” BETA released

In security and privacy: Mississippi enforces Age Assurance Law, NPM suffers a security breach.

Then in our Wanderings, Joe works with Proxmox, and Openmediavault, Jim Troubleshoots hard disks, Majid goes back to work, and Bill works on his “Immich.”

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Link To Full Show Notes

The News:


LMDE 7 ‘Gigi” BETA released


Vivaldi takes a stand: keep browsing human

Security and Privacy


Mississippi’s Age Assurance Law


NPM Packages Security Breach

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!>
]]> 469 469 Bill Loves Windows full 2:24:28 7666 422 – Bit of a Hodgepodge https://mintcast.org/422-bit-of-a-hodgepodge/ Wed, 04 Oct 2023 04:00:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6398 First up in the news: LMDE 6 FAYE released, Mint 21.2 EDGE iso approved, Long-term support for Linux kernel to be cut

In security and privacy: Update LibreOffice Now to Fix a Security Flaw, Chinese hackers have unleashed a never-before-seen Linux backdoor

Then in our Wanderings: Joe is Pining for Manjaro, Majid mixes his compartments, and Eric...well - you'll see.

Download
]]> First up in the news: LMDE 6 FAYE released, Mint 21.2 EDGE iso approved, Long-term support for Linux kernel to be cut

In security and privacy: Update LibreOffice Now to Fix a Security Flaw, Chinese hackers have unleashed a never-before-seen Linux backdoor

Then in our Wanderings: Joe is Pining for Manjaro, Majid mixes his compartments, and Eric…well – you’ll see.

The News

LMDE 6 “FAYE” released

Mint 21.2 EDGE iso approved

Long-term support for Linux kernel to be cut

Security and Privacy

Update LibreOffice Now to Fix a Security Flaw

Chinese hackers have unleashed a never-before-seen Linux backdoor

Full Show Notes Can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contribution
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 422 422 Bit Of A Hodgepodge full 1:42:06 6398 421 – Fun and Feckless https://mintcast.org/421-fun-and-feckless/ Wed, 20 Sep 2023 04:00:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6377 First up in the news: LMDE 6 “Faye” BETA Released, Fedora and Asahi Linux revamp installation process, Plasma 6 release date is set, IBM raises cloud prices, Manjaro 23 released, Mozilla rushes out patches, and ZFS returns to Ubuntu

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

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

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

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

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

The News

LMDE 6 “Faye” – BETA Released

Fedora and Asahi Linux revamp installation process

Plasma 6 will be released in February 2024

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

Manjaro 23.0 Uranos released

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

Ubuntu 23.10 Restores ZFS File-System Support In Its Installer

Full Show Notes Can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contribution
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 421 421 Fun and Feckless full true 2:01:58 6377 385.5 – The Debian Edition https://mintcast.org/385-5-the-debian-edition/ Sat, 11 Jun 2022 03:03:45 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5463 Download
]]> 0:48 Linux Innards
33:54 Check This Out
37:44 Announcements

In our Innards section we discuss Linux Mint Debian Edition 5 “Elsie”

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

Check This Out

10 minutes

  • VDO.ninja this is an open source tool for connecting video feeds and piping them directly into OBS Studio
  • Metadata Cleaner (Gnome Circle app)

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> full 41:45 5463 385 – I like my desktop the way I like my drink https://mintcast.org/385-i-like-my-desktop-the-way-i-like-my-drink/ Sat, 11 Jun 2022 02:45:11 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5457 Download
]]> 1:30 The News
20:10 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
47:57 Announcements

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

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

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

The News

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 385 - I like my desktop the way I like my drink full 52:13 5457 378.5 – Oh, the Distros You’ll Go! https://mintcast.org/378-5-oh-the-distros-youll-go/ Sun, 06 Mar 2022 15:45:12 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5343 In security, Ubuntu Kernel Security Patches, FGKASLR gets closer to mainline, Data stealing malware hides on Linux servers, Go Daddy data breach
In our Wanderings, Joe does some 3d printing, Josh got a new monitor, Norbert switches OS’s, and Clayton looks back
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]]> 1:00 The Linux Innards
38:06 Vibrations from the Ether
43:20 Check This Out
45:00 Announcements & Outro

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

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

The Innards

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

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 378.5 - Oh, the Distros You'll Go! full 49:24 5343 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!>
]]> 369.5 - The LMDE to Be full 1:02:51 5207 mintCast 332.5 – Debian Mojito https://mintcast.org/mintcast-332-5-debian-mojito/ Wed, 15 Apr 2020 05:32:17 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4347 And finally, our listener feedback and a few suggestions.
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we talk about our experiences with LMDE4!

And finally, our listener feedback and a few suggestions.

LINUX INNARDS: 

LMDE4

  • Tony H
    • So I installed LMDE4 a couple of hours after it went RC onto my Dell E7440, after the install the Laptop could not see anything, I installed it 3 times with the same result on this laptop, the third time around I installed Mint 19.3 as a dual boot to see if that would get a grub install and a working boot menu and it did. This issue was replicated on a Dell E6540 but on my Lenovo X230i the install worked perfectly. On last night’s BDLL it was mentioned that someone else had an issue with it not flagging the drive as a boot drive, and they went in with a live disc again and were able to fix the flag issue and all was well, so it could be that this was the issue all along.
    • Post installation you have a welcome menu with the option to install the proprietary codecs that Debian does not install so the Mint devs give the option to install these, which I did. I also installed the software that I use regularly for recording the show and a little photo editing. Also the Zoom client which has become even more of an essential application with all that is happening in the world at the moment, I now use it several times a week for various reasons and joined my worship community using it this morning. 
    • It’s worth noting that while all the software I needed was available in the Debian repositories it is several versions behind the current releases apart from things like Firefox which are classed as security updates. LibreOffice is on the 6.1.7 branch and the current cutting edge DEB file is 6.4.2.
    • So I have been running it for 16 days or so and I have found it rock solid, I have no fancy graphics on my laptop so the latest graphics drivers are not an issue for me but I understand from others that you can get most cards to work with a little tweaking and delving into the system. Stability is great and none of the few updates that have come through have done anything to compromise that. I have been using the LMDE4 laptop as my daily driver for my portable computing needs and a little more and I would be very happy to continue to use this if the main Mint branch went away due to the demise of Ubuntu.          
  • Tony W
    • I ran it in a VM, don’t have a lot to say.  It was Linux Mint
    • I only gave it 2GB of RAM and it ran just fine
    • I did notice the standard responsibility greeting when using apt install which isn’t present in standard Linux Mint
  • Joe
    • I have installed and used it on a VM.  Have to say at first glance it is very much like mint.  X2go loaded right up from the repos and worked fine for the client
    • Used 4gb of ram and only one processor and it still ran very smooth.
    • Docker did not load from the repos.  I will have to look and see if instructions exist.  
    • Snapd did install and run which is a big benefit.
  • Leo
    • Had only one issue during installation. Unfortunately, if someone greener than me would have run into it, I believe it may have been fatal. That is, of course, unless that person had a friend that had a little experience in Linux and partitioning. Or, ya know, joins our Telegram or Discord.
      • Letting the installer deal with partitioning led to it telling me that the partitions weren’t able to be written and to reboot and try again.
      • No amount of reboots seemed to fix the issue, and manual partitioning with the built in GParted editor was the real fix. Created a root and a swap, moved on, and the installer didn’t skip a beat after that.
      • I suspect this may have had something to do with installing it on what is essentially a MMC card. Or, at least, that’s what it shows up as in lsblk.
    • Great as a neverchanging workhorse.
    • Installed just about everything as a Flatpak

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:
We have so much feedback this go-around, we had to skip a few. We’ll hit the ones we missed in the next episode!

  • Discussion re: EFI and Grub between Londoner and Moss on Distrohoppers’ Digest Telegram group

More info on configuring rEFInd can be found at https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/configfile.html under the heading “Hiding and Displaying EFI Boot Loaders”. This page also tells you how to change the icons used.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=315043 “GRUB CUSTOMIZER should be default”

I have a lot I have learned since this, but it got me started on a good track. I will be back next episode with a summation of my findings. – Moss

CHECK THIS OUT!

Announcements: 

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, April 19, 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.
]]> 1 1 full 1:02:38 4347 mintCast 332.5 – Debian Mojito (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-332-5-debian-mojito-mp3/ Wed, 15 Apr 2020 05:32:15 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4345 And finally, our listener feedback and a few suggestions.
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we talk about our experiences with LMDE4!

And finally, our listener feedback and a few suggestions.

LINUX INNARDS: 

LMDE4

  • Tony H
    • So I installed LMDE4 a couple of hours after it went RC onto my Dell E7440, after the install the Laptop could not see anything, I installed it 3 times with the same result on this laptop, the third time around I installed Mint 19.3 as a dual boot to see if that would get a grub install and a working boot menu and it did. This issue was replicated on a Dell E6540 but on my Lenovo X230i the install worked perfectly. On last night’s BDLL it was mentioned that someone else had an issue with it not flagging the drive as a boot drive, and they went in with a live disc again and were able to fix the flag issue and all was well, so it could be that this was the issue all along.
    • Post installation you have a welcome menu with the option to install the proprietary codecs that Debian does not install so the Mint devs give the option to install these, which I did. I also installed the software that I use regularly for recording the show and a little photo editing. Also the Zoom client which has become even more of an essential application with all that is happening in the world at the moment, I now use it several times a week for various reasons and joined my worship community using it this morning. 
    • It’s worth noting that while all the software I needed was available in the Debian repositories it is several versions behind the current releases apart from things like Firefox which are classed as security updates. LibreOffice is on the 6.1.7 branch and the current cutting edge DEB file is 6.4.2.
    • So I have been running it for 16 days or so and I have found it rock solid, I have no fancy graphics on my laptop so the latest graphics drivers are not an issue for me but I understand from others that you can get most cards to work with a little tweaking and delving into the system. Stability is great and none of the few updates that have come through have done anything to compromise that. I have been using the LMDE4 laptop as my daily driver for my portable computing needs and a little more and I would be very happy to continue to use this if the main Mint branch went away due to the demise of Ubuntu.          
  • Tony W
    • I ran it in a VM, don’t have a lot to say.  It was Linux Mint
    • I only gave it 2GB of RAM and it ran just fine
    • I did notice the standard responsibility greeting when using apt install which isn’t present in standard Linux Mint
  • Joe
    • I have installed and used it on a VM.  Have to say at first glance it is very much like mint.  X2go loaded right up from the repos and worked fine for the client
    • Used 4gb of ram and only one processor and it still ran very smooth.
    • Docker did not load from the repos.  I will have to look and see if instructions exist.  
    • Snapd did install and run which is a big benefit.
  • Leo
    • Had only one issue during installation. Unfortunately, if someone greener than me would have run into it, I believe it may have been fatal. That is, of course, unless that person had a friend that had a little experience in Linux and partitioning. Or, ya know, joins our Telegram or Discord.
      • Letting the installer deal with partitioning led to it telling me that the partitions weren’t able to be written and to reboot and try again.
      • No amount of reboots seemed to fix the issue, and manual partitioning with the built in GParted editor was the real fix. Created a root and a swap, moved on, and the installer didn’t skip a beat after that.
      • I suspect this may have had something to do with installing it on what is essentially a MMC card. Or, at least, that’s what it shows up as in lsblk.
    • Great as a neverchanging workhorse.
    • Installed just about everything as a Flatpak

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:
We have so much feedback this go-around, we had to skip a few. We’ll hit the ones we missed in the next episode!

  • Discussion re: EFI and Grub between Londoner and Moss on Distrohoppers’ Digest Telegram group

More info on configuring rEFInd can be found at https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/configfile.html under the heading “Hiding and Displaying EFI Boot Loaders”. This page also tells you how to change the icons used.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=315043 “GRUB CUSTOMIZER should be default”

I have a lot I have learned since this, but it got me started on a good track. I will be back next episode with a summation of my findings. – Moss

CHECK THIS OUT!

Announcements: 

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, April 19, 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.
]]> 1 1 full 1:08:58 4345 mintCast 332 – Thunar Storm https://mintcast.org/mintcast-332-thunar-storm/ Wed, 08 Apr 2020 05:24:22 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4333 Then, in the news, Linux Mint Monthly news comes out, F-Droid gets some money,and Thunar and Java get updates.
In security, Zoom doom.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, I go on a LMDE tour, Tony Hughes becomes a model, Moss learns more about Grub, Tony Watts plays some music, Bo considers a pfSense deployment, and Joe gets caught up on shows.

Then, in the news, Linux Mint Monthly news comes out, F-Droid gets some money,and Thunar and Java get updates.

In security, Zoom doom.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

  • Leo
    • Got an XM8500 thanks to the suggestion by Oliver Kelly. Should be here in about 24 hours… which is just a little late for the show. Oh well, plenty of time to test! 
    • Have been on LMDE4 for about two weeks now.
    • Made a couple of appearances on BDLL to talk about LMDE4. Always a good time over there.
  • Tony H 
    • So all this lockdown stuff is getting serious over this side of the pond. The police now have powers to fine people ignoring the new regulations, otherwise I am helping a couple of friends who are vulnerable with shopping.
    • So Linux-wise, I have been playing with LMDE4 and shared some of my experiences with it on BDLL this last 2 weeks, with Leo and Joe. I will talk more of this later. 
    • I have been using some of the extra time I have, as I can not go to the Gym at the moment to do some more cooking and last week I made sauerkraut, I just love it. Home made has the health benefits you don’t get with the jars from the supermarket as they are pasteurised which kills the beneficial bacteria.   
    • Continuing to play with my diecast models currently taking the models apart and paint stripping in preparation for repainting outdoors when the weather improves as the paint fumes are very strong and even my little paint booth extractor does not completely cure the issue.  
  • Moss
    • I’m learning more about Grub and EFI. It will probably take a couple more weeks at least before I can talk about it and sound intelligent but I’ll try. I’ve gotten quite a bit of help from Andreas in the Ubuntu Podcast Telegram group and from Londoner and cryptodan in the DHD Telegram group. There will be some of this down in Vibrations.
    • I attended a filksing in Denver via Zoom, hosted by my oldest friend, Blind Lemming Chiffon. There were a total of 11 people in attendance. I used my Kudu and was going to use the Manjaro installation but the app they wanted me to download was not in a format I could use (I never was good at installing from tar.gz files). So I opened up KDE neon and ran it from there. There were no issues with software or hardware; the Kudu really is a better machine than my Galago Pro, and I would be using it for this podcast if I had another 17” laptop for travel. Back to Zoom, I definitely noticed a huge difference between an online meeting and an in-person meeting; when you’re performing in front of an audience, there is some kind of energy exchange with your audience, and it just isn’t there with your audience on screen.
    • I tried installing Mullvad on OpenMandriva using the RPM package created for Fedora users, and found it had several dependencies missing. 
['\n Problem: conflicting requests\n - nothing provides libnsl needed by mullvad-vpn-2020.3.0-1.x86_64\n - nothing provides dbus-libs needed by mullvad-vpn-2020.3.0-1.x86_64\n - nothing provides libXScrnSaver needed by mullvad-vpn-2020.3.0-1.x86_64']
    • I’m not sure how to go about adding these; I can try the usual installation processes, but don’t know what to do if that fails.
    • I installed Ubuntu Mate 16.04 just for the halibut. It was interesting to see Kernel 4.4 again. After a few days, I attempted to upgrade to 18.04 using the normal upgrade path… it took a very, very long time and I had to leave it running to go to work. When I came home, it hadn’t quite reached halfway and had frozen. I couldn’t unfreeze it, so I rebooted, and it didn’t boot anymore, so I reinstalled it. I was just going to leave it alone, but after input from the DHD Telegram group, I tried it again last night, and experienced the same issue although at a later point in the files installation procedure than before. The drive has no issues I can find; either I have a bad ISO burn or my machine is subtly damaged. I installed Manjaro on it after that happened, and it installed cleanly and runs.
    • BUT, just before the show, I decided to replace KDE neon on my Kudu with Linux Mint 19.3 Mate. Everything installed fine. Then I went to check my other boots;. there are a total of 3 distros on this machine: OpenMandriva 4.1, Manjaro, and now Mint. OpenMandriva booted fine. But when I selected Manjaro on the Grub menu, the screen went black and there was no further disk activity — I couldn’t even do a three-finger reboot, I had to hold down the power button. I talked to the members of the Telegram group, and other than one person saying that he felt Grub Customizer broke it (unproven since 2013), I got no help. I went back into Mint and ran “sudo update-grub” but that didn’t change anything. I will reinstall Manjaro after the show today.
    • We’re getting ready for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest this Thursday the 9th of April. I think I have a pretty good review of Manjaro ready. I’m also using OpenMandriva more and coming to terms with it much better than anything I’ve used which is not apt-based.
    • And I’ve just found Linux Mint Telegram group, apparently not related to Mint in any way. It’s a smallish group. But it has allowed me to expose our podcast to another group of probably-interested people.
    • We are almost done reading Grave Peril. We have the next book queued up already. I’m disappointed in the use of magic to stop bullets — it’s not like Frank Triggaltheron’s trick in Demon Squad, but an actual force field, and, being an experienced magic user, I don’t find that realistic. Otherwise, we are greatly enjoying the books.
    • Work goes on, I’m apparently “essential”. How nice! I feel like almond oil. I worked several weeks at 5 days, last week at 4 days but only 27 hours and next week I’m back to 5 days, 36,5 hours. I’m supposed to be part time, 3 days per week, but as stated far too often I need the money. They are reducing hours — we have to stay open but are not making much in sales and the store has to justify employee expense. My mother is about the same, et cetera.
  • Tony Watts
    • Have been away last couple episodes due to all time consumed by multiple music projects.  But all music gigs and rehearsals are now on hiatus, obviously.  
    • Had the last week off from work, have done some home home maintenance (stained the deck, cleaned out the garage, yard work…)
    • Got a little bit of motorcycle riding in
    • Have been enjoying the live videos from other musicians
    • Gearing up for doing some audio/video recording at home
      • Had to figure out how to get audio and video hardware on same machine
      • Am able to use both an old 8mm camcorder and phones for webcams
    • New headphones!! – Audio Technica ATH M50x 
      • purchased renewed on Amazon, 100 bucks
    • Helped pick out new laptops for friends
      • Thinkpad T450s – $220 and came with a dock and bag
      • Asus ASUS VivoBook S512 S15
        • I7, 16GB RAM, 2GB dedicated Geforce MX250, 512GB SSD
    • Finally tried out Maru OS on the Nexus 5x
      • Finally did not have to purchase cables etc special for trying this out, which I did not want to do
      • Overall – I was really impressed! Desktop performance was really not bad considering the phone hardware and running Android and Debian simultaneously
      • Desktop spins up INSTANTLY and is ready to use
      • Some oddities
        • Sound does not work from the desktop – phone audio comes through TV, Debian audio does not
        • Can only use Maru on the nexus 5x by casting to Chromecast – this is a limitation of the phone hardware, because the phone’s USB C port is USB 2.0 and does not support HDMI
      • Conclusions: 
        • I do not personally have a use case for this and honestly am hard pressed to think of one – but I think it is amazing.  I don’t think this is replacing a laptop for anybody just yet.  
        • I can see where it might be convenient to use Maru on the go (SSH into something or do a quick task – if you happen to have the right cables/peripherals but not a laptop…)
        • Would love to see continued development on this project
  • Joe
    •  The time at home has allowed me to catch up on TV shows
      • Batwoman
      • Doctor Who
        • Really improved on the last 4 episodes
      • Black Lightning
      • Flash
      • Macgyver
      • If I run out of current tv shows I will go to some classic standbys
        • Doctor Who
        • Red Dwarf 
        • Almost Human
        • No Ordinary Family
    • Couple of movies
      • Aladin 
      • Gemini Man
      • Glass
    • Listening to Kim Harrison’s The Hollows
      • Good series with really long books and a lot of them so it is taking some time to get through the whole thing
      • But I am finding excuses to listen to other things between books
      • Mostly metal and podcasts
      • So may move on to something else and come back
    • Also with the WFH it is kinda difficult to listen to long format as
    • Still playing a lot of Borderlands 3 
    •  Need a new project.
    • Installed a few new typing applications on my son’s HP Mini
      • Hopefully he likes them. 
      • Could not find a decent voice dictation program that could be installed
    • Installed Docker on the Fedora machine
      • Sudo dnf install docker-ce containerd.io grubby
      •  sudo grubby –update-kernel=ALL –args=”systemd.unified_cgroup_hierarchy=0″
      • sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
      • Sudo systemctl enable docker
      • I had tried another workaround where I created the cgroups system folder and mounted it to the correct location but this required I reinstall the docker images every time
    • Then did an install of rsync using RPM 
    • Cron setup to move files
    • Also setup steam streaming
      • Seems to work.  I will need to test more before I can give 2 thumbs up 
    • Still having trouble setting up automatic sshfs using network status
      • It worked on mint and should work the same on fedora.
    • Trying out p3x onenote
      • Browser version of OneNote in an easy package.  
      • Can also use Word from the same install.
      • May be able to use instead of having to install windows on the kids devices.
      • Not going out of my way to remove windows but it will allow for another option.
      • Not so much a fan of the web version of onenote but it is still interesting
    • Got Berryboot working on the Pi 4 but with the 2 versions of Raspbian that I used no audio device would work.  Not even USB sound cards
    • Switched back to the other SD card and was able to get Netflix working with audio.  Which is cool.  
    • The viewing angle on my repurposed laptop monitor is a bit too narrow so I am going to look for other solutions.  I do have a smaller 15 inch laptop that doesn’t power on anymore so I may use that if the angles are better.  

The News: 

    • Linux Mint News for March 2020 (Thanks Dale and Londoner)
      • LMDE3 will EOL on July 1st, 2020
      • Mint 20’s name will be Ulyana
      • Better indicator notifications in the system tray for Electron apps. (Whosy in Telegram may benefit from this.)
      • Better Nemo performance gained by lazy loading thumbnails.
      • Warpinator is still progressing and needs a new name!
      • New color tweaks in themes
      • I WOULD GUESS: released sometime in early June.

Security Update: 

Announcements: 

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, April 19, 2020. That’s 8PM British Summer Time. Thanks Londoner, I hope I got that right. 🙂

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> full 4333 mintCast 332 – Thunar Storm (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-332-thunar-storm-mp3/ Wed, 08 Apr 2020 05:23:57 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4331 Then, in the news, Linux Mint Monthly news comes out, F-Droid gets some money,and Thunar and Java get updates.
In security, Zoom doom.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, I go on a LMDE tour, Tony Hughes becomes a model, Moss learns more about Grub, Tony Watts plays some music, Bo considers a pfSense deployment, and Joe gets caught up on shows.

Then, in the news, Linux Mint Monthly news comes out, F-Droid gets some money,and Thunar and Java get updates.

In security, Zoom doom.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

  • Leo
    • Got an XM8500 thanks to the suggestion by Oliver Kelly. Should be here in about 24 hours… which is just a little late for the show. Oh well, plenty of time to test! 
    • Have been on LMDE4 for about two weeks now.
    • Made a couple of appearances on BDLL to talk about LMDE4. Always a good time over there.
  • Tony H 
    • So all this lockdown stuff is getting serious over this side of the pond. The police now have powers to fine people ignoring the new regulations, otherwise I am helping a couple of friends who are vulnerable with shopping.
    • So Linux-wise, I have been playing with LMDE4 and shared some of my experiences with it on BDLL this last 2 weeks, with Leo and Joe. I will talk more of this later. 
    • I have been using some of the extra time I have, as I can not go to the Gym at the moment to do some more cooking and last week I made sauerkraut, I just love it. Home made has the health benefits you don’t get with the jars from the supermarket as they are pasteurised which kills the beneficial bacteria.   
    • Continuing to play with my diecast models currently taking the models apart and paint stripping in preparation for repainting outdoors when the weather improves as the paint fumes are very strong and even my little paint booth extractor does not completely cure the issue.  
  • Moss
    • I’m learning more about Grub and EFI. It will probably take a couple more weeks at least before I can talk about it and sound intelligent but I’ll try. I’ve gotten quite a bit of help from Andreas in the Ubuntu Podcast Telegram group and from Londoner and cryptodan in the DHD Telegram group. There will be some of this down in Vibrations.
    • I attended a filksing in Denver via Zoom, hosted by my oldest friend, Blind Lemming Chiffon. There were a total of 11 people in attendance. I used my Kudu and was going to use the Manjaro installation but the app they wanted me to download was not in a format I could use (I never was good at installing from tar.gz files). So I opened up KDE neon and ran it from there. There were no issues with software or hardware; the Kudu really is a better machine than my Galago Pro, and I would be using it for this podcast if I had another 17” laptop for travel. Back to Zoom, I definitely noticed a huge difference between an online meeting and an in-person meeting; when you’re performing in front of an audience, there is some kind of energy exchange with your audience, and it just isn’t there with your audience on screen.
    • I tried installing Mullvad on OpenMandriva using the RPM package created for Fedora users, and found it had several dependencies missing. 
['\n Problem: conflicting requests\n - nothing provides libnsl needed by mullvad-vpn-2020.3.0-1.x86_64\n - nothing provides dbus-libs needed by mullvad-vpn-2020.3.0-1.x86_64\n - nothing provides libXScrnSaver needed by mullvad-vpn-2020.3.0-1.x86_64']
    • I’m not sure how to go about adding these; I can try the usual installation processes, but don’t know what to do if that fails.
    • I installed Ubuntu Mate 16.04 just for the halibut. It was interesting to see Kernel 4.4 again. After a few days, I attempted to upgrade to 18.04 using the normal upgrade path… it took a very, very long time and I had to leave it running to go to work. When I came home, it hadn’t quite reached halfway and had frozen. I couldn’t unfreeze it, so I rebooted, and it didn’t boot anymore, so I reinstalled it. I was just going to leave it alone, but after input from the DHD Telegram group, I tried it again last night, and experienced the same issue although at a later point in the files installation procedure than before. The drive has no issues I can find; either I have a bad ISO burn or my machine is subtly damaged. I installed Manjaro on it after that happened, and it installed cleanly and runs.
    • BUT, just before the show, I decided to replace KDE neon on my Kudu with Linux Mint 19.3 Mate. Everything installed fine. Then I went to check my other boots;. there are a total of 3 distros on this machine: OpenMandriva 4.1, Manjaro, and now Mint. OpenMandriva booted fine. But when I selected Manjaro on the Grub menu, the screen went black and there was no further disk activity — I couldn’t even do a three-finger reboot, I had to hold down the power button. I talked to the members of the Telegram group, and other than one person saying that he felt Grub Customizer broke it (unproven since 2013), I got no help. I went back into Mint and ran “sudo update-grub” but that didn’t change anything. I will reinstall Manjaro after the show today.
    • We’re getting ready for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest this Thursday the 9th of April. I think I have a pretty good review of Manjaro ready. I’m also using OpenMandriva more and coming to terms with it much better than anything I’ve used which is not apt-based.
    • And I’ve just found Linux Mint Telegram group, apparently not related to Mint in any way. It’s a smallish group. But it has allowed me to expose our podcast to another group of probably-interested people.
    • We are almost done reading Grave Peril. We have the next book queued up already. I’m disappointed in the use of magic to stop bullets — it’s not like Frank Triggaltheron’s trick in Demon Squad, but an actual force field, and, being an experienced magic user, I don’t find that realistic. Otherwise, we are greatly enjoying the books.
    • Work goes on, I’m apparently “essential”. How nice! I feel like almond oil. I worked several weeks at 5 days, last week at 4 days but only 27 hours and next week I’m back to 5 days, 36,5 hours. I’m supposed to be part time, 3 days per week, but as stated far too often I need the money. They are reducing hours — we have to stay open but are not making much in sales and the store has to justify employee expense. My mother is about the same, et cetera.
  • Tony Watts
    • Have been away last couple episodes due to all time consumed by multiple music projects.  But all music gigs and rehearsals are now on hiatus, obviously.  
    • Had the last week off from work, have done some home home maintenance (stained the deck, cleaned out the garage, yard work…)
    • Got a little bit of motorcycle riding in
    • Have been enjoying the live videos from other musicians
    • Gearing up for doing some audio/video recording at home
      • Had to figure out how to get audio and video hardware on same machine
      • Am able to use both an old 8mm camcorder and phones for webcams
    • New headphones!! – Audio Technica ATH M50x 
      • purchased renewed on Amazon, 100 bucks
    • Helped pick out new laptops for friends
      • Thinkpad T450s – $220 and came with a dock and bag
      • Asus ASUS VivoBook S512 S15
        • I7, 16GB RAM, 2GB dedicated Geforce MX250, 512GB SSD
    • Finally tried out Maru OS on the Nexus 5x
      • Finally did not have to purchase cables etc special for trying this out, which I did not want to do
      • Overall – I was really impressed! Desktop performance was really not bad considering the phone hardware and running Android and Debian simultaneously
      • Desktop spins up INSTANTLY and is ready to use
      • Some oddities
        • Sound does not work from the desktop – phone audio comes through TV, Debian audio does not
        • Can only use Maru on the nexus 5x by casting to Chromecast – this is a limitation of the phone hardware, because the phone’s USB C port is USB 2.0 and does not support HDMI
      • Conclusions: 
        • I do not personally have a use case for this and honestly am hard pressed to think of one – but I think it is amazing.  I don’t think this is replacing a laptop for anybody just yet.  
        • I can see where it might be convenient to use Maru on the go (SSH into something or do a quick task – if you happen to have the right cables/peripherals but not a laptop…)
        • Would love to see continued development on this project
  • Joe
    •  The time at home has allowed me to catch up on TV shows
      • Batwoman
      • Doctor Who
        • Really improved on the last 4 episodes
      • Black Lightning
      • Flash
      • Macgyver
      • If I run out of current tv shows I will go to some classic standbys
        • Doctor Who
        • Red Dwarf 
        • Almost Human
        • No Ordinary Family
    • Couple of movies
      • Aladin 
      • Gemini Man
      • Glass
    • Listening to Kim Harrison’s The Hollows
      • Good series with really long books and a lot of them so it is taking some time to get through the whole thing
      • But I am finding excuses to listen to other things between books
      • Mostly metal and podcasts
      • So may move on to something else and come back
    • Also with the WFH it is kinda difficult to listen to long format as
    • Still playing a lot of Borderlands 3 
    •  Need a new project.
    • Installed a few new typing applications on my son’s HP Mini
      • Hopefully he likes them. 
      • Could not find a decent voice dictation program that could be installed
    • Installed Docker on the Fedora machine
      • Sudo dnf install docker-ce containerd.io grubby
      •  sudo grubby –update-kernel=ALL –args=”systemd.unified_cgroup_hierarchy=0″
      • sudo usermod -aG docker $USER
      • Sudo systemctl enable docker
      • I had tried another workaround where I created the cgroups system folder and mounted it to the correct location but this required I reinstall the docker images every time
    • Then did an install of rsync using RPM 
    • Cron setup to move files
    • Also setup steam streaming
      • Seems to work.  I will need to test more before I can give 2 thumbs up 
    • Still having trouble setting up automatic sshfs using network status
      • It worked on mint and should work the same on fedora.
    • Trying out p3x onenote
      • Browser version of OneNote in an easy package.  
      • Can also use Word from the same install.
      • May be able to use instead of having to install windows on the kids devices.
      • Not going out of my way to remove windows but it will allow for another option.
      • Not so much a fan of the web version of onenote but it is still interesting
    • Got Berryboot working on the Pi 4 but with the 2 versions of Raspbian that I used no audio device would work.  Not even USB sound cards
    • Switched back to the other SD card and was able to get Netflix working with audio.  Which is cool.  
    • The viewing angle on my repurposed laptop monitor is a bit too narrow so I am going to look for other solutions.  I do have a smaller 15 inch laptop that doesn’t power on anymore so I may use that if the angles are better.  

The News: 

    • Linux Mint News for March 2020 (Thanks Dale and Londoner)
      • LMDE3 will EOL on July 1st, 2020
      • Mint 20’s name will be Ulyana
      • Better indicator notifications in the system tray for Electron apps. (Whosy in Telegram may benefit from this.)
      • Better Nemo performance gained by lazy loading thumbnails.
      • Warpinator is still progressing and needs a new name!
      • New color tweaks in themes
      • I WOULD GUESS: released sometime in early June.

Security Update: 

Announcements: 

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, April 19, 2020. That’s 8PM British Summer Time. Thanks Londoner, I hope I got that right. 🙂

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> full 4331 mintCast 330 – Debbie Does Beta https://mintcast.org/mintcast-330-debbie-does-beta/ Wed, 11 Mar 2020 05:01:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4276 Then, our news we have plenty of Linux Mint and LMDE news, Raspberry Pi fixes its USB, apt upgrades, and more.
In security, we find out if AMD’s flaws are as bad as Intel’s.
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

Bi-weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

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

Download

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

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

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

Bi-weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> full 4272 mintCast 322.5 – Clem Before the Storm https://mintcast.org/mintcast-322-5-clem-before-the-storm/ Wed, 27 Nov 2019 05:02:21 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4030 And finally, our listener feedback.
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we talk more about Linux Mint and Clem’s comments.
And finally, our listener feedback.

LINUX INNARDS:

Clement Lefebvre on Episode 321

oh.. mint tools and apps, cool

mintbackup should list all added software, not just software added through mintinstall

but it does so only in Mint, not in LMDE

it relies on a list of pre-installed software which is generated by ubiquity (that’s something live-installer doesn’t do atm)

you might remember Alberto Milone’s Envy

that’s how it started, then he was hired by Canonical and worked on drivers and integrating them with the OS

that’s jockey;

nowadays this is just embedded in something we don’t use in Mint called software-properties-gtk

anyway, ubuntu-drivers is the backend (libs and command line utilities) behind all that

and it’s used by two frontends, software-properties-gtk in Ubuntu and mint-drivers in Mint

in 19.3 mint-report will put a little warning icon in your taskbar if it detects drivers for you, so it won’t just be the welcome screen telling you about mint-drivers

although it’s integrated in Mint, timeshift is not developed by us

https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift

GitHub

teejee2008/timeshift

System restore tool for Linux. Creates filesystem snapshots using rsync+hardlinks, or BTRFS snapshots. Supports scheduled snapshots, multiple backup levels, and exclude filters. Snapshots can be re…

I never tried to export a timeshift backup from one machine to another

I suppose it could work, but you’d need the entire timeshift dir… since backups are incremental

it’s probably better to ghost or disk image though

to move a window to another workspace: ctrl-alt-shift + arrow

alternatively, drag the window with the mouse, press arrow button

you can use expo too (ctrl-alt-up)

or there might be extensions using the edges.. but that’s usually used for tiling

open as root and open in terminal have been in Mint (in all DEs) since the very start

since we dev nemo, we just made these core features, but we also still add these to caja and thunar

regarding snap, the main issue is vendor locking. Imagine you’re developing software for windows and it happens to work more or less for mac and linux.

you don’t want to spend too much time testing it in various distros and you definitely don’t want to package it in a hundred different formats.

somebody comes to you and say “we’re Ubuntu, put your software in our store and it’ll work everywhere in every Linux distribution”

it sounds good and you don’t have to worry about it anymore

if there are commercial aspects you negotiate them with ubuntu, if there are integration aspects, Ubuntu tells you what to change

basically if there’s money involved it goes to Ubuntu, if there’s one theme and one DE to work with, it’ll be the ones used by Ubuntu

if you go here

https://www.spotify.com/ie/download/linux

Music for everyone.

Spotify is all the music you’ll ever need.

first you’re told Linux is a 2nd class citizen and you’re lucky Spotify supports it

second you’re told whatever distro you’re running is a 2nd class citizen and all they care about is Ubuntu.. but that’s ok cause you can install snap

they could have an appimage, they could have a flatpak repo, if they didn’t want to work on it, they could put it in flathub (or just link to it, since it’s already there

https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.spotify.Client)

Flathub—An app store and build service for Linux

Find and install hundreds of apps and games for Linux. Enjoy GIMP, GNU Octave, Spotify, Steam and many more!

they could basically make it so a Fedora user or an Arch user isn’t constantly reminded they’re running a weird distro to access a software app they’re actually paying for

eventually if they think snap is great they’ll drop their APT repo and if we won’t have access to a .deb anymore

do you guys remember what happened when adobe delegated the Linux distribution of their flash plugin to google? for a while we were stuck with old broken versions in Firefox and the only format we were getting updates for was the one that was supported by chromium..

and then we found out it couldn’t play DRM, but the one in Chrome could

you basically do not want to rely on a commercial third party between you and the editor, there’s a huge conflict of interest.

as it turns out Flash died, good riddance.

(on Episode 320):

Linspire was one of the easiest ootb distribution for a while. When we developed mintinstall, to many people we became the first distribution with an “app store”. At the time Android and iOS already had one though, and Linspire already had CNR. You had to pay for it and Linspire wasn’t as popular, but it was an inspiration for us.

I also remember something had been done before Mint in PCBSD if I remember well…

ok I found it, mintinstall was introduced in Mint 3.0 Cassandra (2007), it was predated by Click’n’Run (Linspire) and a solution (I think it was PBIdir) in PCBSD.

it’s weird to look back after so many years :slight_smile:

and all of that was after Google and Apple had done their app stores in Android/iOS of course.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Marc
  • David
  • Gordon
  • George from Tulsa

Topic for MintCast:

What, if anything, do these other distros offer that Mint doesn’t?

If it’s something like “newer software” how about a Mint user taking a Timeshift snapshot, trying the new install from PPA or otherwise, so if things don’t work out, safely reverting?

How about a guide to updating software versions within Mint, if that’s important to the user?

CHECK THIS OUT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

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

WRAP-UP:

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

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 52:01 4030 mintCast 322.5 – Clem Before the Storm (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-322-5-clem-before-the-storm-mp3/ Wed, 27 Nov 2019 05:01:50 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4028 And finally, our listener feedback.
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we talk more about Linux Mint and Clem’s comments.
And finally, our listener feedback.

LINUX INNARDS:

Clement Lefebvre on Episode 321

oh.. mint tools and apps, cool

mintbackup should list all added software, not just software added through mintinstall

but it does so only in Mint, not in LMDE

it relies on a list of pre-installed software which is generated by ubiquity (that’s something live-installer doesn’t do atm)

you might remember Alberto Milone’s Envy

that’s how it started, then he was hired by Canonical and worked on drivers and integrating them with the OS

that’s jockey;

nowadays this is just embedded in something we don’t use in Mint called software-properties-gtk

anyway, ubuntu-drivers is the backend (libs and command line utilities) behind all that

and it’s used by two frontends, software-properties-gtk in Ubuntu and mint-drivers in Mint

in 19.3 mint-report will put a little warning icon in your taskbar if it detects drivers for you, so it won’t just be the welcome screen telling you about mint-drivers

although it’s integrated in Mint, timeshift is not developed by us

https://github.com/teejee2008/timeshift

GitHub

teejee2008/timeshift

System restore tool for Linux. Creates filesystem snapshots using rsync+hardlinks, or BTRFS snapshots. Supports scheduled snapshots, multiple backup levels, and exclude filters. Snapshots can be re…

I never tried to export a timeshift backup from one machine to another

I suppose it could work, but you’d need the entire timeshift dir… since backups are incremental

it’s probably better to ghost or disk image though

to move a window to another workspace: ctrl-alt-shift + arrow

alternatively, drag the window with the mouse, press arrow button

you can use expo too (ctrl-alt-up)

or there might be extensions using the edges.. but that’s usually used for tiling

open as root and open in terminal have been in Mint (in all DEs) since the very start

since we dev nemo, we just made these core features, but we also still add these to caja and thunar

regarding snap, the main issue is vendor locking. Imagine you’re developing software for windows and it happens to work more or less for mac and linux.

you don’t want to spend too much time testing it in various distros and you definitely don’t want to package it in a hundred different formats.

somebody comes to you and say “we’re Ubuntu, put your software in our store and it’ll work everywhere in every Linux distribution”

it sounds good and you don’t have to worry about it anymore

if there are commercial aspects you negotiate them with ubuntu, if there are integration aspects, Ubuntu tells you what to change

basically if there’s money involved it goes to Ubuntu, if there’s one theme and one DE to work with, it’ll be the ones used by Ubuntu

if you go here

https://www.spotify.com/ie/download/linux

Music for everyone.

Spotify is all the music you’ll ever need.

first you’re told Linux is a 2nd class citizen and you’re lucky Spotify supports it

second you’re told whatever distro you’re running is a 2nd class citizen and all they care about is Ubuntu.. but that’s ok cause you can install snap

they could have an appimage, they could have a flatpak repo, if they didn’t want to work on it, they could put it in flathub (or just link to it, since it’s already there

https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.spotify.Client)

Flathub—An app store and build service for Linux

Find and install hundreds of apps and games for Linux. Enjoy GIMP, GNU Octave, Spotify, Steam and many more!

they could basically make it so a Fedora user or an Arch user isn’t constantly reminded they’re running a weird distro to access a software app they’re actually paying for

eventually if they think snap is great they’ll drop their APT repo and if we won’t have access to a .deb anymore

do you guys remember what happened when adobe delegated the Linux distribution of their flash plugin to google? for a while we were stuck with old broken versions in Firefox and the only format we were getting updates for was the one that was supported by chromium..

and then we found out it couldn’t play DRM, but the one in Chrome could

you basically do not want to rely on a commercial third party between you and the editor, there’s a huge conflict of interest.

as it turns out Flash died, good riddance.

(on Episode 320):

Linspire was one of the easiest ootb distribution for a while. When we developed mintinstall, to many people we became the first distribution with an “app store”. At the time Android and iOS already had one though, and Linspire already had CNR. You had to pay for it and Linspire wasn’t as popular, but it was an inspiration for us.

I also remember something had been done before Mint in PCBSD if I remember well…

ok I found it, mintinstall was introduced in Mint 3.0 Cassandra (2007), it was predated by Click’n’Run (Linspire) and a solution (I think it was PBIdir) in PCBSD.

it’s weird to look back after so many years :slight_smile:

and all of that was after Google and Apple had done their app stores in Android/iOS of course.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Marc
  • David
  • Gordon
  • George from Tulsa

Topic for MintCast:

What, if anything, do these other distros offer that Mint doesn’t?

If it’s something like “newer software” how about a Mint user taking a Timeshift snapshot, trying the new install from PPA or otherwise, so if things don’t work out, safely reverting?

How about a guide to updating software versions within Mint, if that’s important to the user?

CHECK THIS OUT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

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

WRAP-UP:

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

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 52:01 4028 mintCast 298 Lots of News https://mintcast.org/mintcast-298-lots-of-news/ Wed, 19 Dec 2018 02:43:00 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3475 full 3475 mintCast 298 Lots of News(mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-298-lots-of-newsmp3/ Wed, 19 Dec 2018 02:33:13 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3472 full 3472 mintCast 297 PI in the sky – Edited https://mintcast.org/mintcast-297-pi-in-the-sky-edited/ Wed, 05 Dec 2018 19:39:18 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3463 full 3463 mintCast 297 Pi in the sky – Edited (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-297-pi-in-the-sky-edited-mp3/ Wed, 05 Dec 2018 19:37:17 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3460 full 3460 mintCast 296 VPN and PI https://mintcast.org/mintcast-296-vpn-and-pi/ Tue, 20 Nov 2018 02:12:49 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3446 full 3446 mintCast 296 VPN and PI https://mintcast.org/mintcast-293-vpn-and-pi/ Tue, 20 Nov 2018 02:09:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3444 full 3444 mintCast 293 – LMDE 3 and new hosts https://mintcast.org/mintcast-293-lmde-3-and-new-hosts/ Mon, 08 Oct 2018 23:51:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3413 293]

Download

Bi-weekly Wanderings:

  • Isaac has been playing with Sonic Pi and working with the Raspberry Pi.
  • Rob has been working with Bash
    • alias dus=’f(){ du -h -d 1 “$@” | sort -h; unset -f f; }; f’

News:

Linux Innards:

  • Rob, Isaac, and the new hosts talk about LMDE 3.

Vibrations from the Ether:

Check this out!:

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast 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.

]]> full 3413 mintCast 293 (MP3) – LMDE 3 and new hosts https://mintcast.org/mintcast-293-mp3-lmde-3-and-new-hosts/ Mon, 08 Oct 2018 23:38:56 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3411 293]

Download

]]> full 3411 mintCast 263 – Installing Basic System Software (Part 2) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-263-installing-basic-system-software-part-2/ Tue, 21 Mar 2017 02:03:02 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3254 263]

Download

News:

Main Topic:

  • Rob and Isaac continue with Chapter 6 in Linux From Scratch. Rob talks about some of the problems he ran into, while Isaac does a little foreshadowing on the coming chapters.

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.

]]> full 3254 mintCast 221 – MakuluLinux and the LMDE2 RC https://mintcast.org/mintcast-221-makululinux-and-the-lmde2-rc/ Fri, 27 Mar 2015 02:53:19 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2948 221] Download

News:

Main Topic: MakuluLinux Cinnamon and LMDE 2 Cinnamon RC

Website:

  • 101 Open Source Tools for Developers (datamation.com)
    Open source tools for programming languages, team management, frameworks, IDEs, text editors and more.

Tip:

  • You need to apply the OpenSSL patches today, not tomorrow (zdnet.com)
    At first glance, you might not think that the latest set of OpenSSL security patches are that important. Sure, there’s a dozen of them and two are serious, but are they really that bad? Yes, actually they’re not just bad, they’re awful.

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

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

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

]]> full 2948 mintCast 206 – Debian and LMDE https://mintcast.org/mintcast-206-debian-and-lmde/ Sat, 16 Aug 2014 15:38:28 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2859 206] Download

News:

  • LMDE switching to Debian Stable for it’s package base when “Jessie” goes live (blog.linuxmint.com)
  • Numerous improvements being worked on for Mint 17.1 (segfault.linuxmint.com)
  • How we turn $199 Chromebooks into Ubuntu-based code learning machines for kids (codestarter.org)
  • Why Hoboken is Throwing Away All of its Student Laptops (wnyc.org)

Main Topic: Debian and LMDE

Website:

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.

]]> full 2859 mintCast 177 – Linux Mint Debian https://mintcast.org/mintcast-177-linux-mint-debian/ Fri, 04 Oct 2013 02:13:36 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2672 177] Download

News:

  • 30 years of GNU — Richard Stallman launched the GNU project on September 27, 1983 (lwn.net)
  • Happy 30th birthday, GNU! GNU Hurd 0.5, GNU Mach 1.4, GNU MIG 1.4 released. (gnu.org) (GNU Hurd) (GNU Mach) (GNU MIG)
  • Chromebooks Grab Share in Back-to-School Purchases (ostatic.com)

Website:  OggCamp

  • OggCamp 13 — Learn/Teach/Play (http://oggcamp.org/)
  • October 19th & 20th 2013
  • Although started by two podcasts, OggCamp has now become something else: a genuine community event. It’s the biggest free software and free culture event in the UK and it’s still entirely free to get in.

Podcast Announcements:

  • Watch for “Event” announcements in the mintCast Community on Google+ to find out when we’re recording!

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott
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.

]]> full 2672