Manjaro – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Mon, 18 Sep 2023 19:55:01 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Manjaro – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 164426984 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!>
]]> 6377 381 – Mozilla Does Something Meta https://mintcast.org/381-mozilla-does-something-meta/ Wed, 11 May 2022 00:16:50 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5377 Download
]]> 1:44 The News
12:40 Security and Privacy Update
32:30 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:11:35 Announcements & Outro

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

In security and privacy: Arch Linux packages are… outdated?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

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

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

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

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 5377 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 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 – Cache Flushing https://mintcast.org/369-cache-flushing/ Wed, 08 Sep 2021 06:05:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5198 In security cache flushing and Bluetooth flaws
Then in our Wanderings Joe pines a phone with plasma, Tony walks 500 miles, and I search for a keyboard
Download
]]> 1:49 The News
27:48 Security Update
32:18 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:01:28 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news Linux Mint is ready for the facelift, Snaps get an upgrade, Kernel 5.14 is out, and 5.15 is looking good, and Ubuntu gets a release date

In security cache flushing and Bluetooth flaws

Then in our Wanderings Joe pines a phone with plasma, Tony walks 500 miles, and I search for a keyboard

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 editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5198 368 – Unlimited Steam Games https://mintcast.org/368-unlimited-steam-games/ Wed, 25 Aug 2021 04:40:34 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5181 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:28 The News
24:36 Security Update
28:51 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
42:30 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news OpenSSH takes another step, Firefox and Thunderbird match now, Lots of new releases and AV1 headed for kernel support

In security, you were this close to having all games on Steam

Then in our Wanderings Joe started Joe’s Plumbing Service and I’ve been boring

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

  • Joe
  • Leo

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5181 mintCast 354 – sudo make me an update (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-354-sudo-make-me-an-update-mp3/ Wed, 10 Feb 2021 05:57:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4913 Then, in the News, a Linux Mint update, Ubuntu loses the lead, Wayland changes, and some new releases
In Security, time to patch… again.
Download
]]> Download

1:54 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
58:30 News
1:19:27 Security Update
1:30:05 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I find a new box, Joe’s light as a feather, Moss explodes a DDE, and Bo hosts his own email

Then, in the News, a Linux Mint update, Ubuntu loses the lead, Wayland changes, and some new releases

In Security, time to patch… again.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • Picked up a Lenovo M715q Tiny. Ryzen 2400GE, 16GB RAM, 256GB NVMe
      • This will be my “studio” machine.
      • Haven’t gamed on it yet, but it’s supposed to be “not horrible”
      • It’ll free up my laptop to be a laptop again
  • Joe
    • So I got some more headphones done.  Replaced the MMCX cable on 2 of the LG HBS 770’s that I constantly use because the cable had gotten hard and cracked.  I am really impressed with how long they lasted, before I was repairing them every couple of months and I think these lasted about 8 months or so before I had to fix them.  I also really like the cables that I got to fix it.  They are a little thicker so they actually tin which makes the whole process a lot easier.  Also did another set of the Ankers with the cables I built myself and they came out well again.  Only one more to go for those. However the cost for making the cables is a bit more and may not be as economically conservative.
      • Since writing that one of the two Ankers has stopped charging.
      • The other is still working well
    • I got my weight down below 230 lbs again which is awesome.  I am not losing weight as quickly as I was when I first changed my diet again but I am not going as hard as I was before either.
    • Made my own protein bars and they are delicious.  I made one mistake though and did not spray the wax paper with a non stick so they are rather difficult to eat.  The ingredients are not cheap so I don’t know if I will be making them again.  But they are tasty.
    • Very interested in the Raspberry Pi Pico as a USB host controller but I want to give the development around it time to grow some but with the $1.99 price tag at MicroCenter I may pick up a few and put them into a drawer until more data is there.
    • Looking to upgrade my MSI GE72 gaming laptop, since the 950m is getting a bit old, but prices are once again going crazy in the used and new market because of the high cost of graphics cards right now and the fact that everyone is still working from home.  If I can wait until the vaccine is more widely distributed and people start going back to the office I imagine there will be a large volume of people off loading computers that will drive the prices back down.
    • I  have a couple of old phones that I am looking to do some projects with since they are just sitting around  but I am not sure what I should do.  Project ideas accepted jb@mintcast.org or tell me about what you have done with old phones to get some more use out of them
    • I also put the question out to the Telegram group and got a very interesting answer from listener Hob.  An application called Deskreen which can be used from an appimage and can turn any device with a web browser into another screen with some small caveats
      • If you want it to be an independent screen then you need a dummy display adapter hooked up to your system or you can display one of the screens that is already there
      • Control does not go through the device it goes through the computer which does make sense from an extra screen perspective but does mean it is not the best for remote controlling a computer.
      • The adapters are not expensive though, so that is good, and then you just set up like a normal screen and connect through the application.  This is awesome if you have a couple of older-yet-still-decent tablets sitting around.  A lot of older iPads have really good screens but a lot of difficulty adding new applications and would be perfect for something like this
  • Moss
    • I got the FuzZ400 back online with an old AMD Radeon HD 6770 video card on loan from Dale Miracle! Hope my mic sounds good. I still need to get the mic boom installed which will only take a drill bit of the correct size to accomplish. The bootup report that the rear fan was not working was solved when I found a piece of styrofoam wedged in the fan blades.
    • I’ve been having minor issues with the SSD in the FuzZ400 because it thinks it’s still in the Gigabyte Mini. I may have to reinstall Mint altogether to get everything really back together, but my current workarounds are good. Sabayon owned GRUB and I could not update it or add Grub Customizer to Sabayon (because Sabayon repos are permanently offline), and Mint did not want to take GRUB back for some reason, so I installed UbuntuDDE on sda5. No more Gentoo. Sad. The other distros were not affected.
    • I installed a new version of ExLight on the Kudu to replace Lubuntu. I’m having strange wifi issues, but this is the farthest I have gotten with a distro written by Arne Exton. 
    • My Manjaro Cinnamon installation finally glitched out (after maybe 8 months) so I replaced that with UbuntuDDE. There were three issues, and two of them were fixed through a chat in Telegram with the dev, and I filed a bug on the 3rd issue with the thanks of the dev. I now have UbuntuDDE Respin on all three of my machines (not counting the Raspberry Pis), and my wife wants it on her T430. Could this be my new Daily Driver?
    • Listener Dylan Burger submitted another excellent article to It’s MOSS, and I responded by making him an Admin on the site. So now we are two. Anyone else?
    • Not gonna talk about my teeth.
    • I’m told that my mother’s lawyers have finally sent documents out following her demise. I have not yet received them, but one cousin has.
    • We may finish White Night, volume 9 of Dresden Files, tonight.

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

    • Sudo Vulnerability
      • The exploit is in the hands of… well… everyone now. Metasploit has the module.
      • A heap buffer overflow occurs when you stuff a software full of data that causes some kind of breakage. In this case, that breakage leads to root access.
    •  Chrome[ium] Zero Day
      • Monocultuuuuuuurrrrrreeeeee!!!!!
      • Google is being very close to the chest with the details, but we know it’s another heap buffer overflow.
      • The Mitre database does not have information on the CVE. Unlisted other places like NIST.
      • Maybe linked to their nation-state writeup.
      • Electron apps…
  • Update your Stuff

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on February 21, 2021. 

Get the show time converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4913 mintCast 354 – sudo make me an update https://mintcast.org/mintcast-354-sudo-make-me-an-update/ Wed, 10 Feb 2021 05:46:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4909 Then, in the News, a Linux Mint update, Ubuntu loses the lead, Wayland changes, and some new releases
In Security, time to patch… again.
Download
]]> Download

1:54 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
58:30 News
1:19:27 Security Update
1:30:05 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I find a new box, Joe’s light as a feather, Moss explodes a DDE, and Bo hosts his own email

Then, in the News, a Linux Mint update, Ubuntu loses the lead, Wayland changes, and some new releases

In Security, time to patch… again.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • Picked up a Lenovo M715q Tiny. Ryzen 2400GE, 16GB RAM, 256GB NVMe
      • This will be my “studio” machine.
      • Haven’t gamed on it yet, but it’s supposed to be “not horrible”
      • It’ll free up my laptop to be a laptop again
  • Joe
    • So I got some more headphones done.  Replaced the MMCX cable on 2 of the LG HBS 770’s that I constantly use because the cable had gotten hard and cracked.  I am really impressed with how long they lasted, before I was repairing them every couple of months and I think these lasted about 8 months or so before I had to fix them.  I also really like the cables that I got to fix it.  They are a little thicker so they actually tin which makes the whole process a lot easier.  Also did another set of the Ankers with the cables I built myself and they came out well again.  Only one more to go for those. However the cost for making the cables is a bit more and may not be as economically conservative.
      • Since writing that one of the two Ankers has stopped charging.
      • The other is still working well
    • I got my weight down below 230 lbs again which is awesome.  I am not losing weight as quickly as I was when I first changed my diet again but I am not going as hard as I was before either.
    • Made my own protein bars and they are delicious.  I made one mistake though and did not spray the wax paper with a non stick so they are rather difficult to eat.  The ingredients are not cheap so I don’t know if I will be making them again.  But they are tasty.
    • Very interested in the Raspberry Pi Pico as a USB host controller but I want to give the development around it time to grow some but with the $1.99 price tag at MicroCenter I may pick up a few and put them into a drawer until more data is there.
    • Looking to upgrade my MSI GE72 gaming laptop, since the 950m is getting a bit old, but prices are once again going crazy in the used and new market because of the high cost of graphics cards right now and the fact that everyone is still working from home.  If I can wait until the vaccine is more widely distributed and people start going back to the office I imagine there will be a large volume of people off loading computers that will drive the prices back down.
    • I  have a couple of old phones that I am looking to do some projects with since they are just sitting around  but I am not sure what I should do.  Project ideas accepted jb@mintcast.org or tell me about what you have done with old phones to get some more use out of them
    • I also put the question out to the Telegram group and got a very interesting answer from listener Hob.  An application called Deskreen which can be used from an appimage and can turn any device with a web browser into another screen with some small caveats
      • If you want it to be an independent screen then you need a dummy display adapter hooked up to your system or you can display one of the screens that is already there
      • Control does not go through the device it goes through the computer which does make sense from an extra screen perspective but does mean it is not the best for remote controlling a computer.
      • The adapters are not expensive though, so that is good, and then you just set up like a normal screen and connect through the application.  This is awesome if you have a couple of older-yet-still-decent tablets sitting around.  A lot of older iPads have really good screens but a lot of difficulty adding new applications and would be perfect for something like this
  • Moss
    • I got the FuzZ400 back online with an old AMD Radeon HD 6770 video card on loan from Dale Miracle! Hope my mic sounds good. I still need to get the mic boom installed which will only take a drill bit of the correct size to accomplish. The bootup report that the rear fan was not working was solved when I found a piece of styrofoam wedged in the fan blades.
    • I’ve been having minor issues with the SSD in the FuzZ400 because it thinks it’s still in the Gigabyte Mini. I may have to reinstall Mint altogether to get everything really back together, but my current workarounds are good. Sabayon owned GRUB and I could not update it or add Grub Customizer to Sabayon (because Sabayon repos are permanently offline), and Mint did not want to take GRUB back for some reason, so I installed UbuntuDDE on sda5. No more Gentoo. Sad. The other distros were not affected.
    • I installed a new version of ExLight on the Kudu to replace Lubuntu. I’m having strange wifi issues, but this is the farthest I have gotten with a distro written by Arne Exton. 
    • My Manjaro Cinnamon installation finally glitched out (after maybe 8 months) so I replaced that with UbuntuDDE. There were three issues, and two of them were fixed through a chat in Telegram with the dev, and I filed a bug on the 3rd issue with the thanks of the dev. I now have UbuntuDDE Respin on all three of my machines (not counting the Raspberry Pis), and my wife wants it on her T430. Could this be my new Daily Driver?
    • Listener Dylan Burger submitted another excellent article to It’s MOSS, and I responded by making him an Admin on the site. So now we are two. Anyone else?
    • Not gonna talk about my teeth.
    • I’m told that my mother’s lawyers have finally sent documents out following her demise. I have not yet received them, but one cousin has.
    • We may finish White Night, volume 9 of Dresden Files, tonight.

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

    • Sudo Vulnerability
      • The exploit is in the hands of… well… everyone now. Metasploit has the module.
      • A heap buffer overflow occurs when you stuff a software full of data that causes some kind of breakage. In this case, that breakage leads to root access.
    •  Chrome[ium] Zero Day
      • Monocultuuuuuuurrrrrreeeeee!!!!!
      • Google is being very close to the chest with the details, but we know it’s another heap buffer overflow.
      • The Mitre database does not have information on the CVE. Unlisted other places like NIST.
      • Maybe linked to their nation-state writeup.
      • Electron apps…
  • Update your Stuff

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on February 21, 2021. 

Get the show time converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4909 mintCast 351.5 – Batting a Thousand (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-351-5-batting-a-thousand-mp3/ Wed, 06 Jan 2021 05:30:34 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4852 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions Download
]]> Download

1:40 Linux Innards
1:12:18 Vibrations from the Ether
1:17:37 Check This Out
1:21:21 Outro

In our Innards section, we look back on last year’s predictions, and make new ones.

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

What Did We Get Wrong?

  • Joe
  • Leo
    • Microsoft Office will have a native Linux version released
    • Adobe Photoshop will have a native Linux version released
    • AutoCAD will have a native Linux version released
      • Nope, Nope, and Nope
    • Moss will record a Gentoo show
      • Moss has moved away from Gentoo but is getting closer to Bodhi, and even started a Bodhi Telegram group which is semi-official
    • Firefox vs. The World. Firefox will be the last popular non-Chromium holdout.
      • The key word is “popular”. At the current rate, that soon won’t include Firefox. Gnome Web and Safari (Mac only) are also still blink-free.
    • 1
  • Tony H
    • Linux Driver support will continue to improve and more hardware manufacturers (Nvidia I’m looking at you) will develop open source Linux Drivers. 
      • Nope
    • I was banking on a New R.Pi revision if not a totally new model, I still think that adding M.2 support, as other SBC manufacturers have, is the way to go in the long term. But this will probably require a totally new board design and may still be a year or 2 away. It may be that someone designs an add on board that will provide this function, but if they do it needs to be a device that allows the drive to be the boot drive.  
      • As for Driver support not much has changed with this so that is probably a Zero  
      • But I nailed it in respect of the Pi, a new compute module 4 was released which if you get a board to plug it that has a PCIe slot you can add a M.2 SATA board and use this for the drive storage. Also the Pi 400 was also released which is a totally new model based on the Pi 4 chipset but clocked at 1800MHz and with a totally new layout that allows for a good passive heat sink across the whole of the board that sits in the Keyboard.
    • 2  100 percent
  • Moss
    • Now that Canonical has agreements with Microsoft for WSL and Amazon for Ubuntu Pro and AWS, I predict they will begin (or continue, if they have already begun in secret) working on agreements with other megacorps such as Alphabet, Oracle, SAP, and Apache.
      • Nope. All wrong. Or they kept it quite well-hidden.
    • If they succeed with any one of these new alliances, they will be insulated from potential buyouts and takeovers. I therefore predict this is the year they go IPO.
      • If not-A then not-B. But SUSE is rumored to be heading for an IPO in 2021.
  • Tony W
    • Maru OS will significantly expand supported devices
      • Will add support for a Oneplus device, very likely 3/3T
      • Will also add support for Galaxy Note devices, Note 9 and/or Note 10
        • Nope
    • We will see convergence on Pine64 devices, with Pinephone able to dock to peripherals and run full desktop applications
      • Oh, Yeah
    • A big box store will sell a PC preconfigured with Linux in 2020
      • Nope
  • Oliver Kelly
    • End of Windows 7 support won’t increase the Linux desktop uptake
      • Point
    • Intel’s new Graphics card wont suck on Linux
      • Not released yet.
  • Erik Lietz
    • Purism will go out of business – the Librem 5 phone endeavor will put it under
       (Purism’s reach into so many products will be their undoing and even with some products doing well, this will be too much for their business to sustain)

      • Although not out of business but Purism has been much much quieter in 2020 than they were in 2019.
    • The PinePhone will be an amazing product and success story for Pine64
       (I am waiting for the second offering after the Brave Heart edition. The PinePhone product development will set a ‘gold’ standard how to correctly launch new product)

      • Pine64 has been a joy to watch their activity in 2020. So much I have just received my Manjaro edition PinePhone. What a great product for $200.
    • An major industry specific software company (Adobe, Autodesk (for AutoCAD), or similar) will offer a Linux version for a flagship software product
       (Adobe, Autodesk, or another specific flagship program dedicated for a very specific task. Running natively, no Wine, no web apps – AutoCAD can already run as a web app)

      • Dud on this one… As a side note for our business we are looking to migrate away from AutoCAD.
    • Microsoft will offer Office 365 on Linux
       (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint at a minimum will be running natively on Linux, no Wine, no web apps)

      • Again a zero – although we are using Edge on Linux in the office for our web accounting systeming.
    • Linux preinstalled from a major hardware supplier will be available in big box stores available off of the shelf (a large hardware vendor (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc)
      • I claim a handicap on this one as with all the goings on people weren’t allowed in stores most of the year. Although, both HP and Lenovo in particular have made major releases with Linux including both Fedora and Ubuntu on a whole bunch of Lenovo products. [Moss: Don’t forget that Dell increased their offerings of Linux machines.]

What About Next Year?

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

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Clay Stone
  • From Alex
  • Brad Alexander
  • Avinash

CHECK THIS OUT! 

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4852 mintCast 351.5 – Batting a Thousand https://mintcast.org/mintcast-351-5-batting-a-thousand/ Wed, 06 Jan 2021 05:13:38 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4846 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:40 Linux Innards
1:12:18 Vibrations from the Ether
1:17:37 Check This Out
1:21:21 Outro

In our Innards section, we look back on last year’s predictions, and make new ones.

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

What Did We Get Wrong?

  • Joe
  • Leo
    • Microsoft Office will have a native Linux version released
    • Adobe Photoshop will have a native Linux version released
    • AutoCAD will have a native Linux version released
      • Nope, Nope, and Nope
    • Moss will record a Gentoo show
      • Moss has moved away from Gentoo but is getting closer to Bodhi, and even started a Bodhi Telegram group which is semi-official
    • Firefox vs. The World. Firefox will be the last popular non-Chromium holdout.
      • The key word is “popular”. At the current rate, that soon won’t include Firefox. Gnome Web and Safari (Mac only) are also still blink-free.
    • 1
  • Tony H
    • Linux Driver support will continue to improve and more hardware manufacturers (Nvidia I’m looking at you) will develop open source Linux Drivers. 
      • Nope
    • I was banking on a New R.Pi revision if not a totally new model, I still think that adding M.2 support, as other SBC manufacturers have, is the way to go in the long term. But this will probably require a totally new board design and may still be a year or 2 away. It may be that someone designs an add on board that will provide this function, but if they do it needs to be a device that allows the drive to be the boot drive.  
      • As for Driver support not much has changed with this so that is probably a Zero  
      • But I nailed it in respect of the Pi, a new compute module 4 was released which if you get a board to plug it that has a PCIe slot you can add a M.2 SATA board and use this for the drive storage. Also the Pi 400 was also released which is a totally new model based on the Pi 4 chipset but clocked at 1800MHz and with a totally new layout that allows for a good passive heat sink across the whole of the board that sits in the Keyboard.
    • 2  100 percent
  • Moss
    • Now that Canonical has agreements with Microsoft for WSL and Amazon for Ubuntu Pro and AWS, I predict they will begin (or continue, if they have already begun in secret) working on agreements with other megacorps such as Alphabet, Oracle, SAP, and Apache.
      • Nope. All wrong. Or they kept it quite well-hidden.
    • If they succeed with any one of these new alliances, they will be insulated from potential buyouts and takeovers. I therefore predict this is the year they go IPO.
      • If not-A then not-B. But SUSE is rumored to be heading for an IPO in 2021.
  • Tony W
    • Maru OS will significantly expand supported devices
      • Will add support for a Oneplus device, very likely 3/3T
      • Will also add support for Galaxy Note devices, Note 9 and/or Note 10
        • Nope
    • We will see convergence on Pine64 devices, with Pinephone able to dock to peripherals and run full desktop applications
      • Oh, Yeah
    • A big box store will sell a PC preconfigured with Linux in 2020
      • Nope
  • Oliver Kelly
    • End of Windows 7 support won’t increase the Linux desktop uptake
      • Point
    • Intel’s new Graphics card wont suck on Linux
      • Not released yet.
  • Erik Lietz
    • Purism will go out of business – the Librem 5 phone endeavor will put it under
       (Purism’s reach into so many products will be their undoing and even with some products doing well, this will be too much for their business to sustain)

      • Although not out of business but Purism has been much much quieter in 2020 than they were in 2019.
    • The PinePhone will be an amazing product and success story for Pine64
       (I am waiting for the second offering after the Brave Heart edition. The PinePhone product development will set a ‘gold’ standard how to correctly launch new product)

      • Pine64 has been a joy to watch their activity in 2020. So much I have just received my Manjaro edition PinePhone. What a great product for $200.
    • An major industry specific software company (Adobe, Autodesk (for AutoCAD), or similar) will offer a Linux version for a flagship software product
       (Adobe, Autodesk, or another specific flagship program dedicated for a very specific task. Running natively, no Wine, no web apps – AutoCAD can already run as a web app)

      • Dud on this one… As a side note for our business we are looking to migrate away from AutoCAD.
    • Microsoft will offer Office 365 on Linux
       (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint at a minimum will be running natively on Linux, no Wine, no web apps)

      • Again a zero – although we are using Edge on Linux in the office for our web accounting systeming.
    • Linux preinstalled from a major hardware supplier will be available in big box stores available off of the shelf (a large hardware vendor (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc)
      • I claim a handicap on this one as with all the goings on people weren’t allowed in stores most of the year. Although, both HP and Lenovo in particular have made major releases with Linux including both Fedora and Ubuntu on a whole bunch of Lenovo products. [Moss: Don’t forget that Dell increased their offerings of Linux machines.]

What About Next Year?

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

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Clay Stone
  • From Alex
  • Brad Alexander
  • Avinash

CHECK THIS OUT! 

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4846 mintCast 351 – Greasy Joysticks (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-351-greasy-joysticks-mp3/ Wed, 30 Dec 2020 06:02:28 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4840 Then in the news, Mint’s 20.1 Beta is available, Kentucky Fried Chicken reduces, reuses and recycles, XFCE sees an upgrade, and Gnome not far behind.
In security, Solarwinds...
Download
]]> Download

0:27 HPR Spot
1:22 Show Start
2:46 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
42:01 News
1:06:10 Security Update
1:16:09 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I nuke an SSD on accident, Joe gets buff…er, Tony fills a doggy bag, Moss is grateful, and Erik Linuxes all the things!

Then in the news, Mint’s 20.1 Beta is available, Kentucky Fried Chicken reduces, reuses and recycles, XFCE sees an upgrade, and Gnome not far behind.

In security, Solarwinds…

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • As promised, rebuilt my NAS during the holiday downtime
    • Traded the Pi 4 for the NAS for Nextcloud.
    • Nextcloud storage lives in BTRFS now!
    • Neal Gompa, of Fedora and openSUSE fame, advises a move to the HWE kernel for better btrfs support.
    • My ESXi server bit the dust… sort of.
      • I was convinced an SSD had died, but it was the OS flash drive
      • Nuked the SSD for testing and realized it was fine…
  • Joe
    • Enjoying time off with the kids. Still haven’t killed any of them yet so things must be going ok.
    • My doctor told me my cholesterol was high again so I need to come off the diet that I am on and try something else.  Going to try out calorie restriction and see if coach Greg knows what he is talking about.  High volume, low calorie dense foods, while maintaining a low caloric intake.  He has a new cookbook but I am not paying those prices for it.
    • At this point the PSP’s have paid for themselves including all the replacement parts.  Thanks listener Dustin I hope it is treating you well.
    • I was able to pick up a broken Samsung Gear S3 at a decent price and tried to get it to work.  I was able to get the battery to charge but I was not able to get it to turn on.  I was able to find a temporary replacement motherboard for it on eBay for 15 dollars without the pedometer or the heart rate monitor which will allow me to test the functionality of the screen and make sure that the problem is the motherboard and not the screen.  Either way I used the profit from the PSP’s to get and I have had fun trying out different things to get it working.  I will be keeping my eyes open on ebay for others that look promising.  I have plenty of replacement parts at this point if I can find one that has just a dead battery or a broken back screen.  But I want to get the test board first so that I can make sure I know what the issues are. I should mention that the item was water damaged and I went through the normal process to try and fix that (IPA and a toothbrush).
    • Lots of exercise while on vacation.  Have done a lot of bike riding and weight lifting.
    • Someone got me an Arcade 1Up machine.  The Space Invaders version.  Which is really cool.  It is an expensive gift to have come from someone not family.  Probably one of the cooler gifts that I have ever gotten.  Definitely going to be modding it after a whole lot of research. 
      • I have already built several USB encoders in the past so that will not be much of an issue.  I will probably use a 3B+ or the batocera ThinkPad so that I can easily hook up a keyboard for quick fixes and setup.  May drill a hole in the side for external USB ports.
      • I will order the display adapter and I have not decided how the control setup will be yet because I do want to be able to play the most amount of games on it that I can including fighting games.  Might be hard for games that require shoulder buttons but not impossible. 
      • I will also have a temporary setup that allows the use of a controller and that could also cover for any games that I cannot get the arcade setup for.
      • I am going to see if I can get some boards and some drill bits and make multiple arcade setups.  Well I would like to, it depends on the cost and the time involved.  But the atmegas for the USB encoders are not hard to make and not expensive, the various arcade buttons can be if I go for good ones.
      • But first I am going to put it together stock and play with it like that
  • Tony Hughes
    • Enjoying Christmas as much as possible with the restrictions here in the UK we had one guest for Lunch on Christmas day which I cooked. After he went home we went for a Christmas day walk and popped in on a relative of my wife who lives 10 minutes walk away. We were in time to say Hi to some of her cousins and her aunt on a Zoom call, we only stayed 5 minutes or so but it was nice to connect with family on the holiday.
    • For the last week it was mainly planning and preparing for Christmas Day baking traditional mince pies, shopping for and preparing everything for the Christmas meal. I like to prepare all the vegetables ready for cooking the day before saves work on the day and I can relax a little. I also cooked the chicken the night before to give me oven space on the day. Only 2 meat eaters so not a massive bird but plenty for leftovers and our friend to take a doggy bag home for his leftover meal.
  • Moss
    • I received some Yule money from Firecat which allowed me to get the computer desk, UPS and monitor I needed to finish setting up my studio space. I need to get a drill bit so I can mount my mic boom and then I’ll be done. 
    • I got a new sponsor on Sponsus! My second…
    • I’ve been hunting for that next great distro to review. I installed Ultimate Edition, which looked really great — like a major media company wanted to make Ubuntu look flashy — but it didn’t write GRUB anywhere it can find. I tried Mageia 8 Beta2, but couldn’t find how to use or install dnfdragora, which is listed as the second choice in package management (it would be my first choice). I tried to install Slax and SolydK, but they refused to install on a UEFI system. So I installed Lubuntu 20.10. I don’t think we’ve reviewed anything with an LX-type desktop yet. I’ve had no issues, and LXQt looks like it has come of age at last.
    • Just prior to yesterday’s team meeting, I decided to reinstall Mint 20 on my desktop and restore it from my latest Timeshift backup. Nope. I then spent several hours trying different things, and the ultimate solution was to nuke the SSD and start over. I installed Linux Mint 20 MATE on it, and was going to leave it there but I just couldn’t, so I split the SSD in half (partitioned, people, I’m not a lunatic), and split the second half ⅔-⅓. I put OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 on the larger partition and Bodhi 5.1 on the smaller. I have those two mostly set up, and as of right now I’m 100% (I think) on the Mint partition being back up to snuff.
    • I’ve had a few promises of articles for It’s Moss dot com, but nothing has yet been submitted. mintCast listeners, this is for you, please submit stuff. I’ve kept up with a couple of blog posts of my own, usually echoed to my blog at LinuxQuestions.org. 
    • Mom is still in the rehab home, and has to pay for her room now as she ran out of days covered by Medicare. But there are other family issues: My uncle and aunt moved from their home in Yakima WA to a senior center in Utah, but my aunt was seriously injured on the trip, had to spend some hospital and rehab time before moving on to Utah, but died shortly after arriving. During this, my uncle went to the hospital with Covid, but he’s back at the center and doing ok (he was back home with his wife before she passed).
    • We have been running out of shows to watch, so we went scanning for old ones we missed. I don’t know how we missed Haven, but it’s on the list now, and we also found Locke & Key (sort of the same thing as Stranger Things but based on a comic) and, to keep things light, Mr. Iglesias, a Welcome-Back-Kotter remake using comedian Gabriel Iglesias and a mostly minority cast taking place in his native Long Beach (which is also where my grandmother lived, so I know some of the places).
    • Dresden-wise, we have started Book 9, White Night.
  • Erik Lietz
    • Office on Mint 20 – since the last episode I was part of, we have completed our transition to Mint 20 on all of our production machines. Transition went well and other than our Windows VM – very stable. 
    • Microsoft Office in a Windows VM – I forgot how long it takes to install Microsoft software. 
    • Switching away from AutoCAD – looking at BricsCAD, which is a Linux native CAD program that may replace AutoCAD for 2D drawing work and most of our 3D design work. 
    • Nextcloud on Intel NUC. For the office, we bought a pre-configured Nextcloud setups on an Intel NUC. I love the NUC form factor. This system has a customized version of Arch Linux tuned to run Nextcloud. Now I just need to wrap my head around using Nextcloud. 
    • Intel NUC as automated off-site backup. Seeing the form factor of the Intel NUC (and really liking them) we got 2 of the NUC’s to set up as off-site daily backup machines. I haven’t gotten into these yet but the idea is to use a minimal installation of Ubuntu Server or Debian using Rsync as the transfer system. 
    • https://www.howtogeek.com/116032/how-to-encrypt-your-home-folder-after-installing-ubuntu/ 
    • https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-use-7zip-to-encrypt-files/ 
    • Raspberry Pis for kids workstations. My wife and I are setting up individual computer stations for the kids using Raspberry Pi 4Bs with 4 GB. I’m hoping they will be desktop replacements. Not sure yet if I will use the Raspberry OS or Ubuntu MATE. 
    • PinePhone! I got my PinePhone last week. It’s the Manjaro edition phone with their FOSH operating system. The build quality on the phone is very good, especially for the price. The Manjaro operating system is a little buggy. I haven’t gotten a phone call to go through yet. Some apps like Telegram work just fine. It does have a fully functioning terminal. After some checking online, I think I am going to get an SD card for it and then try a couple of different operating systems. From what I can tell either Sailfish OS or Ubuntu Touch are the two OS’s that are the most polished right now. (Moss: /e/ and Lineage OS are better than Ubuntu Touch, about the same level of polish as Sailfish, and Sailfish doesn’t sell to the US.)

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • The SolarWinds Hack
    • As far as we know malicious updates were released in new versions of Orion, SolarWinds’ network outage monitoring utility, back in March.
    • FireEye discovered this month because they were on the list of hacked companies, which is how they caught on initially.
    • A big downside is that FireEye makes red team tools. Essentially reconnaissance and hacking tools for penetration testers. Now that code is in the hands of malicious actors.
    • Turns out, over 18,000 of 33,000 customers were using Orion in their networks including, seemingly, every department in the US government that has IT staff, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, and hospitals, just to name a few. More infections noted in every continent but Oceania and Antarctica.
    • We don’t know much about other companies, even the named ones, since this is a damaging issue.
    • Solarwinds has been noted as using a password “solarwinds123” and asking customers to disable antivirus on machines using Orion.
    • …Screaming scientists at the beginning of a catastrophe film.
    • SUSE not affected by SolarWinds Orion vulnerability

Conspiracy Time: The CEO of Solarwinds, Kevin Thompson, signaled he would be moving to another position at the end of the year. It happened, and a successor appointed, a day before the FireEye announcement.

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4840 mintCast 351 – Greasy Joysticks https://mintcast.org/mintcast-351-greasy-joysticks/ Wed, 30 Dec 2020 06:02:27 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4836 Then in the news, Mint’s 20.1 Beta is available, Kentucky Fried Chicken recycles, XFCE sees an upgrade, and Gnome not far behind.
In security, Solarwinds...
Download
]]> Download

0:16 HPR Spot
1:26 Show Start
2:44 Linux Innards
50:34 Vibrations from the Ether
1:04:09 Check This Out
1:07:14 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I nuke an SSD on accident, Joe gets buff…er, Tony fills a doggy bag, Moss is grateful, and Erik Linuxes all the things!

Then in the news, Mint’s 20.1 Beta is available, Kentucky Fried Chicken reduces, reuses and recycles, XFCE sees an upgrade, and Gnome not far behind.

In security, Solarwinds…

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • As promised, rebuilt my NAS during the holiday downtime
    • Traded the Pi 4 for the NAS for Nextcloud.
    • Nextcloud storage lives in BTRFS now!
    • Neal Gompa, of Fedora and openSUSE fame, advises a move to the HWE kernel for better btrfs support.
    • My ESXi server bit the dust… sort of.
      • I was convinced an SSD had died, but it was the OS flash drive
      • Nuked the SSD for testing and realized it was fine…
  • Joe
    • Enjoying time off with the kids. Still haven’t killed any of them yet so things must be going ok.
    • My doctor told me my cholesterol was high again so I need to come off the diet that I am on and try something else.  Going to try out calorie restriction and see if coach Greg knows what he is talking about.  High volume, low calorie dense foods, while maintaining a low caloric intake.  He has a new cookbook but I am not paying those prices for it.
    • At this point the PSP’s have paid for themselves including all the replacement parts.  Thanks listener Dustin I hope it is treating you well.
    • I was able to pick up a broken Samsung Gear S3 at a decent price and tried to get it to work.  I was able to get the battery to charge but I was not able to get it to turn on.  I was able to find a temporary replacement motherboard for it on eBay for 15 dollars without the pedometer or the heart rate monitor which will allow me to test the functionality of the screen and make sure that the problem is the motherboard and not the screen.  Either way I used the profit from the PSP’s to get and I have had fun trying out different things to get it working.  I will be keeping my eyes open on ebay for others that look promising.  I have plenty of replacement parts at this point if I can find one that has just a dead battery or a broken back screen.  But I want to get the test board first so that I can make sure I know what the issues are. I should mention that the item was water damaged and I went through the normal process to try and fix that (IPA and a toothbrush).
    • Lots of exercise while on vacation.  Have done a lot of bike riding and weight lifting.
    • Someone got me an Arcade 1Up machine.  The Space Invaders version.  Which is really cool.  It is an expensive gift to have come from someone not family.  Probably one of the cooler gifts that I have ever gotten.  Definitely going to be modding it after a whole lot of research. 
      • I have already built several USB encoders in the past so that will not be much of an issue.  I will probably use a 3B+ or the batocera ThinkPad so that I can easily hook up a keyboard for quick fixes and setup.  May drill a hole in the side for external USB ports.
      • I will order the display adapter and I have not decided how the control setup will be yet because I do want to be able to play the most amount of games on it that I can including fighting games.  Might be hard for games that require shoulder buttons but not impossible. 
      • I will also have a temporary setup that allows the use of a controller and that could also cover for any games that I cannot get the arcade setup for.
      • I am going to see if I can get some boards and some drill bits and make multiple arcade setups.  Well I would like to, it depends on the cost and the time involved.  But the atmegas for the USB encoders are not hard to make and not expensive, the various arcade buttons can be if I go for good ones.
      • But first I am going to put it together stock and play with it like that
  • Tony Hughes
    • Enjoying Christmas as much as possible with the restrictions here in the UK we had one guest for Lunch on Christmas day which I cooked. After he went home we went for a Christmas day walk and popped in on a relative of my wife who lives 10 minutes walk away. We were in time to say Hi to some of her cousins and her aunt on a Zoom call, we only stayed 5 minutes or so but it was nice to connect with family on the holiday.
    • For the last week it was mainly planning and preparing for Christmas Day baking traditional mince pies, shopping for and preparing everything for the Christmas meal. I like to prepare all the vegetables ready for cooking the day before saves work on the day and I can relax a little. I also cooked the chicken the night before to give me oven space on the day. Only 2 meat eaters so not a massive bird but plenty for leftovers and our friend to take a doggy bag home for his leftover meal.
  • Moss
    • I received some Yule money from Firecat which allowed me to get the computer desk, UPS and monitor I needed to finish setting up my studio space. I need to get a drill bit so I can mount my mic boom and then I’ll be done. 
    • I got a new sponsor on Sponsus! My second…
    • I’ve been hunting for that next great distro to review. I installed Ultimate Edition, which looked really great — like a major media company wanted to make Ubuntu look flashy — but it didn’t write GRUB anywhere it can find. I tried Mageia 8 Beta2, but couldn’t find how to use or install dnfdragora, which is listed as the second choice in package management (it would be my first choice). I tried to install Slax and SolydK, but they refused to install on a UEFI system. So I installed Lubuntu 20.10. I don’t think we’ve reviewed anything with an LX-type desktop yet. I’ve had no issues, and LXQt looks like it has come of age at last.
    • Just prior to yesterday’s team meeting, I decided to reinstall Mint 20 on my desktop and restore it from my latest Timeshift backup. Nope. I then spent several hours trying different things, and the ultimate solution was to nuke the SSD and start over. I installed Linux Mint 20 MATE on it, and was going to leave it there but I just couldn’t, so I split the SSD in half (partitioned, people, I’m not a lunatic), and split the second half ⅔-⅓. I put OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 on the larger partition and Bodhi 5.1 on the smaller. I have those two mostly set up, and as of right now I’m 100% (I think) on the Mint partition being back up to snuff.
    • I’ve had a few promises of articles for It’s Moss dot com, but nothing has yet been submitted. mintCast listeners, this is for you, please submit stuff. I’ve kept up with a couple of blog posts of my own, usually echoed to my blog at LinuxQuestions.org. 
    • Mom is still in the rehab home, and has to pay for her room now as she ran out of days covered by Medicare. But there are other family issues: My uncle and aunt moved from their home in Yakima WA to a senior center in Utah, but my aunt was seriously injured on the trip, had to spend some hospital and rehab time before moving on to Utah, but died shortly after arriving. During this, my uncle went to the hospital with Covid, but he’s back at the center and doing ok (he was back home with his wife before she passed).
    • We have been running out of shows to watch, so we went scanning for old ones we missed. I don’t know how we missed Haven, but it’s on the list now, and we also found Locke & Key (sort of the same thing as Stranger Things but based on a comic) and, to keep things light, Mr. Iglesias, a Welcome-Back-Kotter remake using comedian Gabriel Iglesias and a mostly minority cast taking place in his native Long Beach (which is also where my grandmother lived, so I know some of the places).
    • Dresden-wise, we have started Book 9, White Night.
  • Erik Lietz
    • Office on Mint 20 – since the last episode I was part of, we have completed our transition to Mint 20 on all of our production machines. Transition went well and other than our Windows VM – very stable. 
    • Microsoft Office in a Windows VM – I forgot how long it takes to install Microsoft software. 
    • Switching away from AutoCAD – looking at BricsCAD, which is a Linux native CAD program that may replace AutoCAD for 2D drawing work and most of our 3D design work. 
    • Nextcloud on Intel NUC. For the office, we bought a pre-configured Nextcloud setups on an Intel NUC. I love the NUC form factor. This system has a customized version of Arch Linux tuned to run Nextcloud. Now I just need to wrap my head around using Nextcloud. 
    • Intel NUC as automated off-site backup. Seeing the form factor of the Intel NUC (and really liking them) we got 2 of the NUC’s to set up as off-site daily backup machines. I haven’t gotten into these yet but the idea is to use a minimal installation of Ubuntu Server or Debian using Rsync as the transfer system. 
    • https://www.howtogeek.com/116032/how-to-encrypt-your-home-folder-after-installing-ubuntu/ 
    • https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-use-7zip-to-encrypt-files/ 
    • Raspberry Pis for kids workstations. My wife and I are setting up individual computer stations for the kids using Raspberry Pi 4Bs with 4 GB. I’m hoping they will be desktop replacements. Not sure yet if I will use the Raspberry OS or Ubuntu MATE. 
    • PinePhone! I got my PinePhone last week. It’s the Manjaro edition phone with their FOSH operating system. The build quality on the phone is very good, especially for the price. The Manjaro operating system is a little buggy. I haven’t gotten a phone call to go through yet. Some apps like Telegram work just fine. It does have a fully functioning terminal. After some checking online, I think I am going to get an SD card for it and then try a couple of different operating systems. From what I can tell either Sailfish OS or Ubuntu Touch are the two OS’s that are the most polished right now. (Moss: /e/ and Lineage OS are better than Ubuntu Touch, about the same level of polish as Sailfish, and Sailfish doesn’t sell to the US.)

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • The SolarWinds Hack
    • As far as we know malicious updates were released in new versions of Orion, SolarWinds’ network outage monitoring utility, back in March.
    • FireEye discovered this month because they were on the list of hacked companies, which is how they caught on initially.
    • A big downside is that FireEye makes red team tools. Essentially reconnaissance and hacking tools for penetration testers. Now that code is in the hands of malicious actors.
    • Turns out, over 18,000 of 33,000 customers were using Orion in their networks including, seemingly, every department in the US government that has IT staff, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, and hospitals, just to name a few. More infections noted in every continent but Oceania and Antarctica.
    • We don’t know much about other companies, even the named ones, since this is a damaging issue.
    • Solarwinds has been noted as using a password “solarwinds123” and asking customers to disable antivirus on machines using Orion.
    • …Screaming scientists at the beginning of a catastrophe film.
    • SUSE not affected by SolarWinds Orion vulnerability

Conspiracy Time: The CEO of Solarwinds, Kevin Thompson, signaled he would be moving to another position at the end of the year. It happened, and a successor appointed, a day before the FireEye announcement.

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4836 mintCast 349 – NAT Ain’t A Firewall (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-349-nat-aint-a-firewall-mp3/ Wed, 02 Dec 2020 05:19:55 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4794 Then in the news, OpenSUSE’s going public?, Pine64 feels the Plasma, and Linux gets Ray tracing.
In security, kill switches and a reminder that NAT ain’t a firewall.
Download
]]> Download

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

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

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

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

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

Leo

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

Moss

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

Josh

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

Joe

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

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

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

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4794 mintCast 349 – NAT Ain’t A Firewall https://mintcast.org/mintcast-349-nat-aint-a-firewall/ Wed, 02 Dec 2020 05:18:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4788 Then in the news, OpenSUSE’s going public?, Pine64 feels the Plasma, and Linux gets Ray tracing.
In security, kill switches and a reminder that NAT ain’t a firewall.
Download
]]> Download

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

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

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

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

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

Leo

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

Moss

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

Josh

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

Joe

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

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

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

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4788 mintCast 341 – GRUB Breaks the Internet (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-341-grub-breaks-the-internet-mp3/ Wed, 12 Aug 2020 04:36:37 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4570 Then, our news Linux Mint gets stats, Gnome squashes a memory bug, and Ubuntu hits its first 20.04 point release.
In security, Intel pulls an Intel
Download
]]>

Download

1:38 Wanderings
45:15 News
53:22 Check This Out
1:08:21 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been browsing, Joe’s been fixing docks, Moss has been slowly filling up his machine, and Tony Watts gets a new axe

Then, our news Linux Mint gets stats, Gnome squashes a memory bug, and Ubuntu hits its first 20.04 point release.

In security, Intel pulls an Intel

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Configuring GPU rendering on Firefox
      • In about:config , change “gfx.webrender.all” to “true”
      • Great on the desktop where I have a discrete card. Not so much on the laptop where it’s integrated and can get choppy at higher loads.
    • One thing I keep running into in other distributions besides Mint is odd color profiles in anything Chromium based. 
      • My eyes aren’t good enough to see if it’s absolutely everything, but I can certainly see a red hue on links which turn them purple.
      • This includes electron apps like Discord. The links and my profile picture look funny.
      • I can fix it in Chrome and Chromium by changing the Force Color Profile option in chrome://flags from “default” to “sRGB”
      • This doesn’t work in Electron apps cause I don’t know how to do this! Is there a command line addition? In flatpak? Curious and annoying.
    • Got a windscreen for my PodMic. 
      • I was noticing a lot of air in my P’s and B’s in the recordings. This should cut it down a little.
      • It was a non standard size, and since it already has an internal pop filter, there weren’t many choices. $12 later, I have one.
  • Moss
    • I added Manjaro Cinnamon to my Desktop PC last week, and last night I burned a USB stick with the latest Feren OS and installed it. I then reburned the stick for Gecko ROLLING, but it was too late to start another installation. And you have no idea how much willpower it took to not install it just before the show.. This means I have at least one variant of every base Linux distro except Red Hat and Slackware (unless you count that SuSE was the first variant of Slackware). I also do not have any independents such as Solus. I have not quite finished configuring everything I have installed, but I did make up a neat checklist to make sure I was getting everything. I will still have 2 free partitions on my desktop and 1 on my laptop… gotta get serious and do more hopping!
    • I got my new Raspberry Pi 4, a gift from Firecat which I previously mentioned, working with Ubuntu MATE 20.04. I even got Mullvad working on it. The only software I can’t load are SoftMaker Office (or FreeOffice) and PySolFC, neither of which apparently come in ARM64 versions. I discovered that the sound features of the Pi are a bit on the weak side; at no more than 80% of the normal loudness of my desktop, using the same powered speakers, the sound is a bit on the fuzzy side. I have ordered a USB sound “card” from eBay, and it should be here soon.
    • I also just received some new Bluetooth earbuds, AMZLAB Gmbh T16. It’s weird having something just “sit comfortably in your ear” and not be actually affixed with rubber earplugs. For the most part, they sit. I’ve had them drop out a couple times, and accidentally turn off when I pick them up. Still learning the ins and outs of these, but they seem cool. I decided to order them with the last of my covid-19 money when the nice LG headset Joe had sent me started having the right ear go in and out. And of course they are having trouble working with my desktop and Mumble, so I’m still wearing my old wired earbuds for this show.
    • My wife’s T430 messed up running Mint 20 Cinnamon. After trying a few things, I wound up replacing the SSD with another one and doing a clean install of Mint 20 MATE. I also attempted to put KDE neon on it, but that would not boot AND messed up the Mint boot. I put Ubuntu Unity in the second partition and ran Grub Customizer, and now Mint boots. That was 3 hours of a whole lot of not fun, but I got the job done.
    • I’m finding a few more jobs to apply for. I have yet to get an actual response except for the one two months ago, and they also had their own employment section for seniors but I haven’t heard from them either. There have been a few online tests, but I haven’t heard the results from those either; you rarely do, except for possibly getting an interview or a next step.
    • Ubuntu Unity 20.04.1 was released on the 6th. I did a complete new installation, and used the same partition I previously had installed Unity 20.04. I got everything set up the way I wanted it, and then returned control of GRUB to OpenMandriva, (because nobody does a beautiful GRUB screen like OM4). I immediately discovered that I could not boot into Ubuntu Unity but all my other distros worked. DUH. OM4 had not been updated for the new installation and was still looking for the old one. Back into OM4: sudo update-grub2. 
    • We finished reading Death Masks, the 5th book in the Dresden Files series, and have started the 6th, Blood Rites. Still don’t think it’s as good as Demon Squad, but we’re enjoying it.
  • Joe
    • I know Josh and I discussed it before but I am going to make my own macro keyboard
      • I have ordered a solderable 12 key keyboard and an arduino pro micro
      • I will set it up along with hotkeys to run programs that are already setup or to kick off bash scripts in a specific locations
    • Ended up with 12 of the Lenovo docks in the set of 10 that I ordered to see if I could fix.
      • All of them worked but 3 were missing some of the outer casing
        • Was able to 3D print some mounts that cover the missing parts and I will be keeping those for myself to use in future projects
      • This is probably also the right time of year to be selling with school about to start
      • Still need to buy some power supplies for them, which I think I can get for around 7 dollars a piece
      • That means the total cost will be around 9 dollars each and I am going to try and sell 9 of them for 30 dollars each (which is 10 dollars less than you can find them anywhere else)
    • Started playing around with X2Go screen mirroring instead of the usual spinning off a new desktop and I have to say that it works really well.
      • It used to be that you would have to install a whole new application specific for the task but now it is built into the server application and it works awesome.  
      • Using it with the 7140 in conjunction with the dock until I get some more HDMI cables
      • I do see some occasional latency but nothing insurmountable and only on the wifi in the garage.  I should put a wifi access point out there and see if that helps
    • Small problem with the 7130 and the 7140 with the dock.  They heat up and dont charge worth a darn.  Not sure what the issue is at this point.  I could try modding the dock so that it has a cooling fan in the back that blows against the tablet but that won’t fix the underlying issue.  Why is it heating up?  It doesn’t do that when connected to the keyboard dock or when connected to the other power supply. 
    • Borderlands 3 on mint with proton
      • Worked after reinstalling Vulkan
      • Slow to start but runs smooth after the first few seconds  *ACO 
    • Made it to book 12 in the Drizzt collection and decided to take a break so I don’t get burned out on it with 24 left to go
    • M.R. Forbes Ghost and Magic books
      • 4 book series
    • Son of the Blacksword books 1 and 2
    • Steve McHugh Death Unleashed one of the Hellequin novels
    • Stephen Blackmoore’s Eric Carter novel 1-3
    • Headphones fun
      • Found a really good deal on 6 broken Skullcandy Hesh 3’s which are not as good as the Crushers but have some really good things going for them.  Like passthrough power. And the fact that all the electronics are on one side.  Which makes them better for building my own bluetooth dongles
      • Already have two different types of female connectors that I can use but I will only do it to the ones that I cannot get back in good working order.
      • My other Hesh 3’s that I had sitting around ended up with a bloated battery but I was able to replace it with one from one of the 2 Crushers that I was not able to get working. The battery size was a little different but there was plenty of room to work and they are all the same 3.7 volts.
      • Someone asked me to fix a PS3 headset that their kid was using for school and I agreed.  Cechya 0080
        • Loaned them one of the Crushers with the 3D printed hinges and a couple of extra hinges just in case
        • Bad battery and some broken plastic around the mic and some occasional static on the mic
        • Replaced the battery easy enough with one with a lot more capacity.  It turns on but takes a super long time to charge fully
        • Used Gorilla Glue to reseat the plastic for the mic but my son then broke it again so I ended up gluing it to the side at full extension.  
  • Tony W
    • Beverage sampling
    • I gots me a NEW ELECTRIC GUITAR Y’ALL!!
    • GIGS!
      • Played at Ironshield Brewing Friday night.  New brewery right in my backyard, serving up German lagers and Belgian ales.  Lovely place, great crowd, and everyone really seemed to enjoy the music.  I met a couple of the owners.  Owners and staff were very pleased with the live music and I’ll be back again in September, and hopefully regularly after that.  
      • Played Lucky’s in Brookhaven (near Atlanta) Saturday night, last minute pickup gig to fill in for a musician who injured his hand.
    • New gaming headset for my kid
      • JBL Quantum 200
    • Chromebook exchange
      • Bought a 2020 Acer Chromebook 314 Open Box on Ebay
      • This was to replace the 2018 Chromebook I bought a couple weeks ago that didn’t last 24 hours (wouldn’t charge)
        • That model had a puny barrel connection for power and seemed like the charge port had broken loose – newer model uses USB C (yay)
        • Bought for my kid who is special needs and it’s simple enough for him to use – it’s very similar in operation to his Android phone (Myself I’d be interested in used Thinkpad for a personal laptop).  But I actually really enjoy using the Chromebook
        • Some features 
          • 64GB storage
          • 4GB Ram
          • Celeron N4000
          • Battery lasts about 12 hours
          • Able to run linux apps as well as Android apps – available to launch just like any other ChromeOS app
          • Sync with android phone, smartlock etc
          • Family Link 
          • Stadia works well!
          • Have not yet tried Linux via Crouton yet but I will!

THE NEWS: 

  • Linux Mint Monthly News July 2020
    • Lots of donations as expected a month after a release
    • Most of the user base, a little more than half,  is on some version of 19
      • Most of those are on 19.3, just slightly edging out 20.
      • But, a little under a quarter of the user base are already on 20.
      • Coming in slightly under LM20 is LM 19.1, Tessa
      • Next in line is LM 18.3, Sylvia
    • The chart shows about half the Linux Mint users surveyed use the most recently or close-to-recent versions of Linux Mint.
    • However, the chart leaves out anybody that has changed their default Linux Mint Firefox start page, which is probably, a very sizable chunk.
  • <Moss>Gnome software memory bug: Rudra Saraswat of Ubuntu Unity writes: Thanks for reporting this issue [memory getting eaten up in UUE]. gnome-software seems to be the main culprit in this memory hogging issue. There is an open High priority issue in Launchpad for this. This started with 17.04, and the issue still exists in Focal Fossa. Even on fresh boot of Gnome, people have reported 500-600 MB of ram usage (some even reported 22 GB and above). Also, check – https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/gn5an6/gnome_software_memory_bug/ (This should be fixed in the 20.04.1 release.)
  • Ubuntu 20.04.1 released

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • Whoops! Intel “Misplaces” 20GB of Data
    • Till Kottman, an IT consultant that has helped break other data dumps in the past, linked to a trove of 20GB of Intel proprietary information named “Intel exconfidential Lake Platform Release ;)” 
    • Kottman says the anonymous source claims to have breached Intel’s security, while Intel claims this is false.
    • Here’s some of the chat log
      • Anon: They have a server hosted online by Akam[a]i CDN that wasn’t properly secure. After an internet wide nmap scan I found my target port open and went through a list of 370 possible servers based on details that nmap provided with an NSE script. {reconnaissance / port scanning}
      • Anon: I used a python script I made to probe different aspects of the server including username defaults and unsecure file/folder access. {enumeration}
      • Anon: The folders were just lying open if you could guess the name of one. Then when you were in the folder you could go back to root and just click into the other folders that you didn’t know the name of. {directory traversal attack}
      • Anon: Best of all, due to another misconfiguration, I could masqu[e]rade as any of their employees or make my own user. {privilege escalation}
      • Anon: Another funny thing is that on the zip files you may find password protected. Most of them use the password Intel123 or intel123.
    •  
    • None of that is confirmed, so grain of salt.
    • The initial posting was done in an effort to have people download the data dump and scour it for interesting or useful information.
    • If the titles are to be believed, there’ll be Intel ME flash tools (oh no), Intel dev and debugging tools, roadmaps, schematics, Intel Snowridge Process Simulator dev kit, among other things.
  • GRUB Breaks the Internet
    • Researchers at Eclypsium identified a buffer overflow that happens in GRUB2 as it goes through the grub.cfg file allowing an attacker to gain arbitrary code execution. Dubbed Boothole. For those playing along at home, that means game over.
    • What would happen is that an attacker would configure grub.cfg to run malware of her choosing before handing off the boot sequence to the OS.
    • If administrative privileges on the box are available to the attacker, this exploit can even be used on SecureBoot enabled systems without altering the vendor shim, which is the bit that actually boots the system while still being recognized as “secure”. While that makes this attack a bit harder, surely there are no shortage of additional attacks that can grant this privilege.
    • So here’s the rub. Every. Single. Version. Of. Linux. Needs. An. Update.
    • With the exception of one, unnamed, vendor.
    • What needs to happen to actually fix this once and for all
      • An update to GRUB2
      • Distros need to update their installers, shims and bootloaders
      • Microsoft needs to sign off on all of the new shims
      • Users and Admins need to be aware of this exploit and use only the newest, patched versions of install and recovery media
      • Firmware updates on affected hardware to prevent this attack

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, August 23, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC and 8 pm British Summer Time. Time conversions are available at Calculator.net should you need to determine your 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.
]]> 4570 mintCast 341 – GRUB Breaks the Internet https://mintcast.org/mintcast-341-grub-breaks-the-internet/ Wed, 12 Aug 2020 04:11:34 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4563 Then, our news Linux Mint gets stats, Gnome squashes a memory bug, and Ubuntu hits its first 20.04 point release.
In security, Intel pulls an Intel
Download
]]>

Download

1:38 Wanderings
45:15 News
53:22 Check This Out
1:08:21 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been browsing, Joe’s been fixing docks, Moss has been slowly filling up his machine, and Tony Watts gets a new axe

Then, our news Linux Mint gets stats, Gnome squashes a memory bug, and Ubuntu hits its first 20.04 point release.

In security, Intel pulls an Intel

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Configuring GPU rendering on Firefox
      • In about:config , change “gfx.webrender.all” to “true”
      • Great on the desktop where I have a discrete card. Not so much on the laptop where it’s integrated and can get choppy at higher loads.
    • One thing I keep running into in other distributions besides Mint is odd color profiles in anything Chromium based. 
      • My eyes aren’t good enough to see if it’s absolutely everything, but I can certainly see a red hue on links which turn them purple.
      • This includes electron apps like Discord. The links and my profile picture look funny.
      • I can fix it in Chrome and Chromium by changing the Force Color Profile option in chrome://flags from “default” to “sRGB”
      • This doesn’t work in Electron apps cause I don’t know how to do this! Is there a command line addition? In flatpak? Curious and annoying.
    • Got a windscreen for my PodMic. 
      • I was noticing a lot of air in my P’s and B’s in the recordings. This should cut it down a little.
      • It was a non standard size, and since it already has an internal pop filter, there weren’t many choices. $12 later, I have one.
  • Moss
    • I added Manjaro Cinnamon to my Desktop PC last week, and last night I burned a USB stick with the latest Feren OS and installed it. I then reburned the stick for Gecko ROLLING, but it was too late to start another installation. And you have no idea how much willpower it took to not install it just before the show.. This means I have at least one variant of every base Linux distro except Red Hat and Slackware (unless you count that SuSE was the first variant of Slackware). I also do not have any independents such as Solus. I have not quite finished configuring everything I have installed, but I did make up a neat checklist to make sure I was getting everything. I will still have 2 free partitions on my desktop and 1 on my laptop… gotta get serious and do more hopping!
    • I got my new Raspberry Pi 4, a gift from Firecat which I previously mentioned, working with Ubuntu MATE 20.04. I even got Mullvad working on it. The only software I can’t load are SoftMaker Office (or FreeOffice) and PySolFC, neither of which apparently come in ARM64 versions. I discovered that the sound features of the Pi are a bit on the weak side; at no more than 80% of the normal loudness of my desktop, using the same powered speakers, the sound is a bit on the fuzzy side. I have ordered a USB sound “card” from eBay, and it should be here soon.
    • I also just received some new Bluetooth earbuds, AMZLAB Gmbh T16. It’s weird having something just “sit comfortably in your ear” and not be actually affixed with rubber earplugs. For the most part, they sit. I’ve had them drop out a couple times, and accidentally turn off when I pick them up. Still learning the ins and outs of these, but they seem cool. I decided to order them with the last of my covid-19 money when the nice LG headset Joe had sent me started having the right ear go in and out. And of course they are having trouble working with my desktop and Mumble, so I’m still wearing my old wired earbuds for this show.
    • My wife’s T430 messed up running Mint 20 Cinnamon. After trying a few things, I wound up replacing the SSD with another one and doing a clean install of Mint 20 MATE. I also attempted to put KDE neon on it, but that would not boot AND messed up the Mint boot. I put Ubuntu Unity in the second partition and ran Grub Customizer, and now Mint boots. That was 3 hours of a whole lot of not fun, but I got the job done.
    • I’m finding a few more jobs to apply for. I have yet to get an actual response except for the one two months ago, and they also had their own employment section for seniors but I haven’t heard from them either. There have been a few online tests, but I haven’t heard the results from those either; you rarely do, except for possibly getting an interview or a next step.
    • Ubuntu Unity 20.04.1 was released on the 6th. I did a complete new installation, and used the same partition I previously had installed Unity 20.04. I got everything set up the way I wanted it, and then returned control of GRUB to OpenMandriva, (because nobody does a beautiful GRUB screen like OM4). I immediately discovered that I could not boot into Ubuntu Unity but all my other distros worked. DUH. OM4 had not been updated for the new installation and was still looking for the old one. Back into OM4: sudo update-grub2. 
    • We finished reading Death Masks, the 5th book in the Dresden Files series, and have started the 6th, Blood Rites. Still don’t think it’s as good as Demon Squad, but we’re enjoying it.
  • Joe
    • I know Josh and I discussed it before but I am going to make my own macro keyboard
      • I have ordered a solderable 12 key keyboard and an arduino pro micro
      • I will set it up along with hotkeys to run programs that are already setup or to kick off bash scripts in a specific locations
    • Ended up with 12 of the Lenovo docks in the set of 10 that I ordered to see if I could fix.
      • All of them worked but 3 were missing some of the outer casing
        • Was able to 3D print some mounts that cover the missing parts and I will be keeping those for myself to use in future projects
      • This is probably also the right time of year to be selling with school about to start
      • Still need to buy some power supplies for them, which I think I can get for around 7 dollars a piece
      • That means the total cost will be around 9 dollars each and I am going to try and sell 9 of them for 30 dollars each (which is 10 dollars less than you can find them anywhere else)
    • Started playing around with X2Go screen mirroring instead of the usual spinning off a new desktop and I have to say that it works really well.
      • It used to be that you would have to install a whole new application specific for the task but now it is built into the server application and it works awesome.  
      • Using it with the 7140 in conjunction with the dock until I get some more HDMI cables
      • I do see some occasional latency but nothing insurmountable and only on the wifi in the garage.  I should put a wifi access point out there and see if that helps
    • Small problem with the 7130 and the 7140 with the dock.  They heat up and dont charge worth a darn.  Not sure what the issue is at this point.  I could try modding the dock so that it has a cooling fan in the back that blows against the tablet but that won’t fix the underlying issue.  Why is it heating up?  It doesn’t do that when connected to the keyboard dock or when connected to the other power supply. 
    • Borderlands 3 on mint with proton
      • Worked after reinstalling Vulkan
      • Slow to start but runs smooth after the first few seconds  *ACO 
    • Made it to book 12 in the Drizzt collection and decided to take a break so I don’t get burned out on it with 24 left to go
    • M.R. Forbes Ghost and Magic books
      • 4 book series
    • Son of the Blacksword books 1 and 2
    • Steve McHugh Death Unleashed one of the Hellequin novels
    • Stephen Blackmoore’s Eric Carter novel 1-3
    • Headphones fun
      • Found a really good deal on 6 broken Skullcandy Hesh 3’s which are not as good as the Crushers but have some really good things going for them.  Like passthrough power. And the fact that all the electronics are on one side.  Which makes them better for building my own bluetooth dongles
      • Already have two different types of female connectors that I can use but I will only do it to the ones that I cannot get back in good working order.
      • My other Hesh 3’s that I had sitting around ended up with a bloated battery but I was able to replace it with one from one of the 2 Crushers that I was not able to get working. The battery size was a little different but there was plenty of room to work and they are all the same 3.7 volts.
      • Someone asked me to fix a PS3 headset that their kid was using for school and I agreed.  Cechya 0080
        • Loaned them one of the Crushers with the 3D printed hinges and a couple of extra hinges just in case
        • Bad battery and some broken plastic around the mic and some occasional static on the mic
        • Replaced the battery easy enough with one with a lot more capacity.  It turns on but takes a super long time to charge fully
        • Used Gorilla Glue to reseat the plastic for the mic but my son then broke it again so I ended up gluing it to the side at full extension.  
  • Tony W
    • Beverage sampling
    • I gots me a NEW ELECTRIC GUITAR Y’ALL!!
    • GIGS!
      • Played at Ironshield Brewing Friday night.  New brewery right in my backyard, serving up German lagers and Belgian ales.  Lovely place, great crowd, and everyone really seemed to enjoy the music.  I met a couple of the owners.  Owners and staff were very pleased with the live music and I’ll be back again in September, and hopefully regularly after that.  
      • Played Lucky’s in Brookhaven (near Atlanta) Saturday night, last minute pickup gig to fill in for a musician who injured his hand.
    • New gaming headset for my kid
      • JBL Quantum 200
    • Chromebook exchange
      • Bought a 2020 Acer Chromebook 314 Open Box on Ebay
      • This was to replace the 2018 Chromebook I bought a couple weeks ago that didn’t last 24 hours (wouldn’t charge)
        • That model had a puny barrel connection for power and seemed like the charge port had broken loose – newer model uses USB C (yay)
        • Bought for my kid who is special needs and it’s simple enough for him to use – it’s very similar in operation to his Android phone (Myself I’d be interested in used Thinkpad for a personal laptop).  But I actually really enjoy using the Chromebook
        • Some features 
          • 64GB storage
          • 4GB Ram
          • Celeron N4000
          • Battery lasts about 12 hours
          • Able to run linux apps as well as Android apps – available to launch just like any other ChromeOS app
          • Sync with android phone, smartlock etc
          • Family Link 
          • Stadia works well!
          • Have not yet tried Linux via Crouton yet but I will!

THE NEWS: 

  • Linux Mint Monthly News July 2020
    • Lots of donations as expected a month after a release
    • Most of the user base, a little more than half,  is on some version of 19
      • Most of those are on 19.3, just slightly edging out 20.
      • But, a little under a quarter of the user base are already on 20.
      • Coming in slightly under LM20 is LM 19.1, Tessa
      • Next in line is LM 18.3, Sylvia
    • The chart shows about half the Linux Mint users surveyed use the most recently or close-to-recent versions of Linux Mint.
    • However, the chart leaves out anybody that has changed their default Linux Mint Firefox start page, which is probably, a very sizable chunk.
  • <Moss>Gnome software memory bug: Rudra Saraswat of Ubuntu Unity writes: Thanks for reporting this issue [memory getting eaten up in UUE]. gnome-software seems to be the main culprit in this memory hogging issue. There is an open High priority issue in Launchpad for this. This started with 17.04, and the issue still exists in Focal Fossa. Even on fresh boot of Gnome, people have reported 500-600 MB of ram usage (some even reported 22 GB and above). Also, check – https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/gn5an6/gnome_software_memory_bug/ (This should be fixed in the 20.04.1 release.)
  • Ubuntu 20.04.1 released

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • Whoops! Intel “Misplaces” 20GB of Data
    • Till Kottman, an IT consultant that has helped break other data dumps in the past, linked to a trove of 20GB of Intel proprietary information named “Intel exconfidential Lake Platform Release ;)” 
    • Kottman says the anonymous source claims to have breached Intel’s security, while Intel claims this is false.
    • Here’s some of the chat log
      • Anon: They have a server hosted online by Akam[a]i CDN that wasn’t properly secure. After an internet wide nmap scan I found my target port open and went through a list of 370 possible servers based on details that nmap provided with an NSE script. {reconnaissance / port scanning}
      • Anon: I used a python script I made to probe different aspects of the server including username defaults and unsecure file/folder access. {enumeration}
      • Anon: The folders were just lying open if you could guess the name of one. Then when you were in the folder you could go back to root and just click into the other folders that you didn’t know the name of. {directory traversal attack}
      • Anon: Best of all, due to another misconfiguration, I could masqu[e]rade as any of their employees or make my own user. {privilege escalation}
      • Anon: Another funny thing is that on the zip files you may find password protected. Most of them use the password Intel123 or intel123.
    •  
    • None of that is confirmed, so grain of salt.
    • The initial posting was done in an effort to have people download the data dump and scour it for interesting or useful information.
    • If the titles are to be believed, there’ll be Intel ME flash tools (oh no), Intel dev and debugging tools, roadmaps, schematics, Intel Snowridge Process Simulator dev kit, among other things.
  • GRUB Breaks the Internet
    • Researchers at Eclypsium identified a buffer overflow that happens in GRUB2 as it goes through the grub.cfg file allowing an attacker to gain arbitrary code execution. Dubbed Boothole. For those playing along at home, that means game over.
    • What would happen is that an attacker would configure grub.cfg to run malware of her choosing before handing off the boot sequence to the OS.
    • If administrative privileges on the box are available to the attacker, this exploit can even be used on SecureBoot enabled systems without altering the vendor shim, which is the bit that actually boots the system while still being recognized as “secure”. While that makes this attack a bit harder, surely there are no shortage of additional attacks that can grant this privilege.
    • So here’s the rub. Every. Single. Version. Of. Linux. Needs. An. Update.
    • With the exception of one, unnamed, vendor.
    • What needs to happen to actually fix this once and for all
      • An update to GRUB2
      • Distros need to update their installers, shims and bootloaders
      • Microsoft needs to sign off on all of the new shims
      • Users and Admins need to be aware of this exploit and use only the newest, patched versions of install and recovery media
      • Firmware updates on affected hardware to prevent this attack

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, August 23, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC and 8 pm British Summer Time. Time conversions are available at Calculator.net should you need to determine your 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.
]]> 4563 mintCast 340 – Unit of Measurement (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-340-unit-of-measurement-mp3/ Wed, 29 Jul 2020 04:57:59 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4552 Then, in our news, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix changes course, Android comes to a real phone, Blender needs blenders, and more
In security, we talk Twitter
Download
]]>

Download

1:41 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
53:01 The News
1:13:28 Security
1:20:12 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Jason prints a masterpiece, I get knee deep in Mint, Tony Hughes becomes a journalist, Moss has new toys, Joe springs a leak, and Tony Watts is rockin’ in the free world.

Then, in our news, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix changes course, Android comes to a real phone, Blender needs blenders, and more

In security, we talk Twitter

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Jason
    • Trying a large life-size-ish 3D print of an old sculpt I made
    • Been going a bit analog recently with carving in wood. I was gifted some large chunks of cherry and walnut, so I’ve been trying to do interesting things with those.
    • Related to carving and 3D printing, I designed (in Blender!) and printed a mount for carving wooden and horn rings. Did that a while ago, but some folks were asking for more information about it, so I recorded an episode about that on my own podcast that I relaunched a month or so ago, the Open Source Creative Podcast (not-so-shameless plug). Got the thing posted up on Thingiverse for anyone interested.
    • Got a pretty cool audio interface for recording, but then realized that my trusty Røde Smartlav+ won’t properly connect to it without chaining a series of adapters, which I’d much rather not do.
    • Been digging a bit into various web technology stuff
      • Flask and all kinds of crazy Python stuff for databases. Plus that also means playing with Javascript and learning what a REST API is and how to make one
      • Self-hosted analytics with Goatcounter
      • Self-hosted mailing list with phpList
      • Migrated all of my websites to static sites generated by Hugo
      • Messing with getting SSL to play nice on subdomains with different hosting
  • Leo
    • Video capture card + some Raspberry Pi goodness. Plan on adding a few videos to the Terminal Tricks channel about Raspberry Pi’s. Not sure yet what I want to do, but now I have the things I need to do it! I’m open to suggestions.
    • Really putting LM20 through its paces. After a few hiccups I mentioned on the last show, stable stable stable.
    • Got a dock for my t450s! It’s great, except… Droidcam dies on me if I use the powered USB port on the dock. Have to go straight to the laptop’s powered port. Easy fix.
    • The BDLL I miss is the BDLL where they talk about my real, actual profession…

 

  • Tony H
    • Around the end of last year beginning of this I started to write a series on podcast production in Linux for Full Circle Magazine and Ronnie accepted it, due to publishing timings the first in this series is to be in the next issue of the magazine. I have written the first 3 installments, and in the process of starting to write the 4th part.   
    • I have been doing little group restorations of some of my Matchbox castings and doing 4 or 5 of the same casting at the same time. This week I did 5 Lamborghini Marzal’s and was quite pleased with the results. 
    • Myself and Moss recorded Episode 015 of Distrohoppers Digest and the show went out on Friday. Apologies to Moss as his audio on the edit did not come out the best it could, but I freely admit to not being a professional sound engineer and don’t always get it completely right on the edits.
    • On Friday night I did a fresh install of Mint 20 Mate on the Distrohoppers Laptop with the intention of this being my review for what will be the September show, as I will be away and not have sufficient bandwidth to record and edit while away from ‘Studio’ A here in Blackpool.  
  • Moss
    • I’m probably reviewing Ubuntu Unity for Episode 016 of Distrohoppers’. I have had a brief but fun conversation with its dev, Rudra Saraswat. I also haven’t yet decided what to burn to SD to run my Pi 4 on, and am waiting for Rudra to port UUR to the Pi, which he is working on, but am still considering Ubuntu MATE and Manjaro RPi versions.
    • We recorded Episode 015 of Distrohoppers’ Digest on this past Wednesday and had a grand time doing it. It should be available now. Episode 012 has gone over 400 downloads, our 8th episode to do so. 
    • I sold a laptop to one of our listeners. From the proceeds of that sale, I purchased a few things: A new microphone, which you should be hearing now. New SSDs for my desktop and laptop (1 Tb for the desktop, 512 Gb for the laptop), which are installed and will give me more room to install even more distros! I still had half the money from the sale to put into savings against my unemployment period or continued savings should I get a job soon.
    • Yes, I now have 200 distros on each of my computers. No, it’s not that bad. I have 6 distro partitions on my laptop, 1 of which is unused at present, and 8 on my desktop, 5 of which are unused. I did things the easy way on my desktop, cloning the old drive to the new one and then adding partitions, and the hard way on the laptop, as Clonezilla refused to load on my laptop, completely partitioning the disk using GPartEd and doing 5 installations in one night. Thanks to USB 3.1 and the magic of SSDs, I did all of that in 5.25 hours, bringing each distro to a complete install and upgrade with a few programs removed and a couple things added, about 85% complete. Since then, I have Mint, Bodhi, and Ubuntu Unity Edition up to about 98%, I got my printer installed but I’m still needing to configure some programs and tweak one or two things. OpenMandriva and Gecko are still pretty much in the 85-90% range of completion due to lack of time.
    • I talked with Rudra Saraswat, dev of Ubuntu Unity Edition, UbuntuEd, and a couple other new distros, and found he didn’t really have a good mirror, so I hooked him up with my old friend and listener Firecat, and now he does. Always good to make connections in the community.
    • We actually did get one or two chapters of Dresden files read since last show, which brings us to Joe.
  • Joe
    • New Dresden Files book Peace Talks came out.  I enjoyed it but it felt incomplete and despite the several years since the last book it still felt like the book was very rushed and incomplete
      • This is likely because the book was split into two and the next book will be out in a couple of months
    • Started reading the full Drizzt collection by Salvatore which is 36 books.  I have attempted to read the whole collection before and I usually only make it about half way through.  But with the completion of the most recent series I really want to give it another go.
    • My freezer out in the garage had an issue.  An operator issue.  It was still full of ice which then melted.  
      • Yeah that sucks but what is worse is that the water that leaked out was absorbed by the box next to the fridge which happened to be one of my double boxes of comic books.  
      • About half of the comics in it were ruined despite being bagged
    • My server gave up the ghost finally after years of limping along so I had to build a new one
      • Ryzen 5 3600 
        • Would have preferred the 3600g but that one is not out yet.  
      • B450m matx motherboard
      • Cube case
      • Rx 560 graphics card
        • It will eventually get upgraded
      • They gave me the incorrect power supply at Micro Center so I had to make do with another one.
        • Still need to get this taken back
      • G.SKILL 16GB 2X8GB DDR4 3200 KIT
      • I was however able to use the old operating system setup from the ssd out of the old system
      • After I reinstalled plex all the old library setup was in place and working 
      • Same with Docker, once it was installed my old images showed up and I was able to pick up everything where it was before
      • Some of the Icons images are not as they should be but it is really not an issue for me. After the upgrade from 18 to 19 to 20
      • Resilio Sync however I had to go through and start from scratch
        • Still some small issues with permissions but I am working on it
      • Have started using psensor to keep track of temperatures
    • Purchased a dock for the 7130 to test out some of the functions because I had read that the HDMI and displayport output did not work on Linux.
      • It worked fine right out of the box.  I thought it may have been displaylink which eats a lot of processor in Linux but in checking it is not installed on my tablet
        • For those that don’t know, Displaylink is the USB-to-video output technology that most adapters and docks and port replicators use
        • Very optimized for Windows and while they do make a driver for Linux it has a lot of overhead
      • So this could very easily serve as a convergence device.  I will be working on a setup for it
      • The dock costs a bit more than I would like but I am looking for ways around that as it is the power supply for it that costs the most.
    • Ordered a lot of as-is ThinkPad USB 3.0 docks for 25 dollars
      • Should have been here before this weekend so I would have something to work on but got delayed
      • I would need to buy power supplies for them separately and those would be about 10 dollars apiece but I don’t want to order any until I know how many I will get fixed
      • Should be able to sell for around 40 dollars each.  Which is less than the local area has been selling hubs and docks and port replicators for
    • I have to install Windows on 3 devices in the next couple of weeks
  • Tony W
    • New (to me) guitar amp!  Boss Katana 100W
      • Built-in amp “modeling” + every guitar effect you can think of 
      • Bought used, 100W version with GA-FC footswitch and EV-30 expression pedal included
      • Boss tone studio software makes this really powerful (but unfortunately Windows only) 
    • Reworked hard drives in studio computer
      • One more new 120GB SSD
      • Total of 3 drives (2 X SSD for “filthy dual booting” + 1 spinning for storage)
      • Used Ventoy for the Windows install
      • Played with a few distros via Ventoy startup USB
        • PopOS, manjaro, others
    • Bought a chromebook (Acer CB-431) for my kid’s school, 
    • Would have been a used thinkpad if it was for me, but seems good for use I got it for (Thinkpad T430/T440/T450/X220/X230 all still plentiful at good prices on ebay) 
      • Linux Beta
        • Linux virtual machine within ChromeOS
        • Turn it on in settings, allocate how many GB.  It installs, drops you in terminal (tony76tfg@penguin)
        • It’s Debian 10 Buster underneath
        • VLC was already installed
    • Music gigs 
      • Had a good streak of about 5 gigs over 6 weeks, slowing down a bit now (only one each in Jul/Aug)
    • Lots of grilling and barbecuing!  
      • New grill, char griller Akorn (similar to big green egg, cheaper)

THE NEWS

SECURITY UPDATE

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 9th of August at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM 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.
]]> 4552 mintCast 340 – Unit of Measurement https://mintcast.org/mintcast-340-unit-of-measurement/ Wed, 29 Jul 2020 04:41:02 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4547 Then, in our news, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix changes course, Android comes to a real phone, Blender needs blenders, and more
In security, we talk Twitter
Download
]]>

Download

1:41 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
53:01 The News
1:13:28 Security
1:20:12 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Jason prints a masterpiece, I get knee deep in Mint, Tony Hughes becomes a journalist, Moss has new toys, Joe springs a leak, and Tony Watts is rockin’ in the free world.

Then, in our news, Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix changes course, Android comes to a real phone, Blender needs blenders, and more

In security, we talk Twitter

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Jason
    • Trying a large life-size-ish 3D print of an old sculpt I made
    • Been going a bit analog recently with carving in wood. I was gifted some large chunks of cherry and walnut, so I’ve been trying to do interesting things with those.
    • Related to carving and 3D printing, I designed (in Blender!) and printed a mount for carving wooden and horn rings. Did that a while ago, but some folks were asking for more information about it, so I recorded an episode about that on my own podcast that I relaunched a month or so ago, the Open Source Creative Podcast (not-so-shameless plug). Got the thing posted up on Thingiverse for anyone interested.
    • Got a pretty cool audio interface for recording, but then realized that my trusty Røde Smartlav+ won’t properly connect to it without chaining a series of adapters, which I’d much rather not do.
    • Been digging a bit into various web technology stuff
      • Flask and all kinds of crazy Python stuff for databases. Plus that also means playing with Javascript and learning what a REST API is and how to make one
      • Self-hosted analytics with Goatcounter
      • Self-hosted mailing list with phpList
      • Migrated all of my websites to static sites generated by Hugo
      • Messing with getting SSL to play nice on subdomains with different hosting
  • Leo
    • Video capture card + some Raspberry Pi goodness. Plan on adding a few videos to the Terminal Tricks channel about Raspberry Pi’s. Not sure yet what I want to do, but now I have the things I need to do it! I’m open to suggestions.
    • Really putting LM20 through its paces. After a few hiccups I mentioned on the last show, stable stable stable.
    • Got a dock for my t450s! It’s great, except… Droidcam dies on me if I use the powered USB port on the dock. Have to go straight to the laptop’s powered port. Easy fix.
    • The BDLL I miss is the BDLL where they talk about my real, actual profession…

 

  • Tony H
    • Around the end of last year beginning of this I started to write a series on podcast production in Linux for Full Circle Magazine and Ronnie accepted it, due to publishing timings the first in this series is to be in the next issue of the magazine. I have written the first 3 installments, and in the process of starting to write the 4th part.   
    • I have been doing little group restorations of some of my Matchbox castings and doing 4 or 5 of the same casting at the same time. This week I did 5 Lamborghini Marzal’s and was quite pleased with the results. 
    • Myself and Moss recorded Episode 015 of Distrohoppers Digest and the show went out on Friday. Apologies to Moss as his audio on the edit did not come out the best it could, but I freely admit to not being a professional sound engineer and don’t always get it completely right on the edits.
    • On Friday night I did a fresh install of Mint 20 Mate on the Distrohoppers Laptop with the intention of this being my review for what will be the September show, as I will be away and not have sufficient bandwidth to record and edit while away from ‘Studio’ A here in Blackpool.  
  • Moss
    • I’m probably reviewing Ubuntu Unity for Episode 016 of Distrohoppers’. I have had a brief but fun conversation with its dev, Rudra Saraswat. I also haven’t yet decided what to burn to SD to run my Pi 4 on, and am waiting for Rudra to port UUR to the Pi, which he is working on, but am still considering Ubuntu MATE and Manjaro RPi versions.
    • We recorded Episode 015 of Distrohoppers’ Digest on this past Wednesday and had a grand time doing it. It should be available now. Episode 012 has gone over 400 downloads, our 8th episode to do so. 
    • I sold a laptop to one of our listeners. From the proceeds of that sale, I purchased a few things: A new microphone, which you should be hearing now. New SSDs for my desktop and laptop (1 Tb for the desktop, 512 Gb for the laptop), which are installed and will give me more room to install even more distros! I still had half the money from the sale to put into savings against my unemployment period or continued savings should I get a job soon.
    • Yes, I now have 200 distros on each of my computers. No, it’s not that bad. I have 6 distro partitions on my laptop, 1 of which is unused at present, and 8 on my desktop, 5 of which are unused. I did things the easy way on my desktop, cloning the old drive to the new one and then adding partitions, and the hard way on the laptop, as Clonezilla refused to load on my laptop, completely partitioning the disk using GPartEd and doing 5 installations in one night. Thanks to USB 3.1 and the magic of SSDs, I did all of that in 5.25 hours, bringing each distro to a complete install and upgrade with a few programs removed and a couple things added, about 85% complete. Since then, I have Mint, Bodhi, and Ubuntu Unity Edition up to about 98%, I got my printer installed but I’m still needing to configure some programs and tweak one or two things. OpenMandriva and Gecko are still pretty much in the 85-90% range of completion due to lack of time.
    • I talked with Rudra Saraswat, dev of Ubuntu Unity Edition, UbuntuEd, and a couple other new distros, and found he didn’t really have a good mirror, so I hooked him up with my old friend and listener Firecat, and now he does. Always good to make connections in the community.
    • We actually did get one or two chapters of Dresden files read since last show, which brings us to Joe.
  • Joe
    • New Dresden Files book Peace Talks came out.  I enjoyed it but it felt incomplete and despite the several years since the last book it still felt like the book was very rushed and incomplete
      • This is likely because the book was split into two and the next book will be out in a couple of months
    • Started reading the full Drizzt collection by Salvatore which is 36 books.  I have attempted to read the whole collection before and I usually only make it about half way through.  But with the completion of the most recent series I really want to give it another go.
    • My freezer out in the garage had an issue.  An operator issue.  It was still full of ice which then melted.  
      • Yeah that sucks but what is worse is that the water that leaked out was absorbed by the box next to the fridge which happened to be one of my double boxes of comic books.  
      • About half of the comics in it were ruined despite being bagged
    • My server gave up the ghost finally after years of limping along so I had to build a new one
      • Ryzen 5 3600 
        • Would have preferred the 3600g but that one is not out yet.  
      • B450m matx motherboard
      • Cube case
      • Rx 560 graphics card
        • It will eventually get upgraded
      • They gave me the incorrect power supply at Micro Center so I had to make do with another one.
        • Still need to get this taken back
      • G.SKILL 16GB 2X8GB DDR4 3200 KIT
      • I was however able to use the old operating system setup from the ssd out of the old system
      • After I reinstalled plex all the old library setup was in place and working 
      • Same with Docker, once it was installed my old images showed up and I was able to pick up everything where it was before
      • Some of the Icons images are not as they should be but it is really not an issue for me. After the upgrade from 18 to 19 to 20
      • Resilio Sync however I had to go through and start from scratch
        • Still some small issues with permissions but I am working on it
      • Have started using psensor to keep track of temperatures
    • Purchased a dock for the 7130 to test out some of the functions because I had read that the HDMI and displayport output did not work on Linux.
      • It worked fine right out of the box.  I thought it may have been displaylink which eats a lot of processor in Linux but in checking it is not installed on my tablet
        • For those that don’t know, Displaylink is the USB-to-video output technology that most adapters and docks and port replicators use
        • Very optimized for Windows and while they do make a driver for Linux it has a lot of overhead
      • So this could very easily serve as a convergence device.  I will be working on a setup for it
      • The dock costs a bit more than I would like but I am looking for ways around that as it is the power supply for it that costs the most.
    • Ordered a lot of as-is ThinkPad USB 3.0 docks for 25 dollars
      • Should have been here before this weekend so I would have something to work on but got delayed
      • I would need to buy power supplies for them separately and those would be about 10 dollars apiece but I don’t want to order any until I know how many I will get fixed
      • Should be able to sell for around 40 dollars each.  Which is less than the local area has been selling hubs and docks and port replicators for
    • I have to install Windows on 3 devices in the next couple of weeks
  • Tony W
    • New (to me) guitar amp!  Boss Katana 100W
      • Built-in amp “modeling” + every guitar effect you can think of 
      • Bought used, 100W version with GA-FC footswitch and EV-30 expression pedal included
      • Boss tone studio software makes this really powerful (but unfortunately Windows only) 
    • Reworked hard drives in studio computer
      • One more new 120GB SSD
      • Total of 3 drives (2 X SSD for “filthy dual booting” + 1 spinning for storage)
      • Used Ventoy for the Windows install
      • Played with a few distros via Ventoy startup USB
        • PopOS, manjaro, others
    • Bought a chromebook (Acer CB-431) for my kid’s school, 
    • Would have been a used thinkpad if it was for me, but seems good for use I got it for (Thinkpad T430/T440/T450/X220/X230 all still plentiful at good prices on ebay) 
      • Linux Beta
        • Linux virtual machine within ChromeOS
        • Turn it on in settings, allocate how many GB.  It installs, drops you in terminal (tony76tfg@penguin)
        • It’s Debian 10 Buster underneath
        • VLC was already installed
    • Music gigs 
      • Had a good streak of about 5 gigs over 6 weeks, slowing down a bit now (only one each in Jul/Aug)
    • Lots of grilling and barbecuing!  
      • New grill, char griller Akorn (similar to big green egg, cheaper)

THE NEWS

SECURITY UPDATE

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 9th of August at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM 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.
]]> 4547 mintCast 335 – Be Our Guest (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-335-be-our-guest-mp3/ Wed, 20 May 2020 04:08:50 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4411 Then, in the news, no ZFS for Mint, some honorable mentions on the Ubuntu section last episode, LibreOffice Alpha is out, and more!
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, I finally got my Pi4, Scott has been working from home, Moss plays for his peeps, Tony’s been reinstalling, and Joe’s been printing in 3d

Then, in the news, no ZFS for Mint, some honorable mentions on the Ubuntu section last episode, LibreOffice Alpha is out, and more!

In security, it’s GitHub’s turn for issues.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

  • Scott
    • Working about 50% Home and on-site at my employer
    • Golfed 3 times this week. Nothing stellar for any rounds (Mid-80s)
    • Working on MS Teams at work. Great little program. Best collaboration program I have used in a while. I am a big SharePoint fan for work, and this brings it all together. Just started to Learn more about Flows and Power Apps and see how they can help my team.
    • Got another friend to install Linuxmint on an old laptop for his kids this week!
  • Leo
    • Finally got a Pi 4, 4GB! Luckily I’ve been collecting bits slowly for it since they came out. I already had the power cable, SD cards and keyboard and mouse, so I only had to get the new micro HDMI cable and a case.
      • I tried getting it converted over to a recording box on the latest Raspbian. It performs quite well, even under load, if not a little hot. Audacity alone worked fantastic. Mumble worked great alone, also. However, when using them together, it seems like the two softwares will steal the mic from each other, not even leaving the hardware selectable in any lists!
      • I’m planning on setting everything up on Ubuntu 20.04, since it’s official now.
    • Kubuntu on the laptop, Fedora Plasma spin on the desktop. Duking it out for ease of use.
  • Tony H 
    • 3 or 4 weeks ago I badly cut the middle finger on my left hand which was initially very painful and made using the computer a little tricky as I didn’t want to bash it while using the keyboard.  
    • More playing with my model cars, I did a couple of more regular car models since the last time I was on the show, the Matchbox No64 MG1100 which is a cool little model with a little dog with his head out the back window. And a very old 1950’s casting of the Jaguar XK140, I ended up painting this little model twice after mucking up the paint job while detailing it the first time around. 
    • Baking and cooking (it was during a cooking session that I cut my finger on a can lid) I’ve also been baking sultana scones the homemade ones are so good compared to the shop bought ones. 
    • Playing with Kubuntu 20.04 on the Distrohoppers laptop for my review for episode 14 of DHD, I’m quite liking it and glad the issue with the keyring password manager before logging into the WiFi is not an issue as it was with the Q4OS Plasma release I was using last month.  
    • Attended the virtual meeting of my LUG/Makerspace, this has become a regular Saturday morning meeting and is keeping us connected during the lockdown, I try to be part of it as much as possible. One of our younger members lives across the road from me and I have only seen him online in the last 4 weeks when I could shout to him from across the road.
    • Reinstalling my Desktop PC after Kubuntu 20.04 screwed up my Grub and all efforts to rescue it failed, I wish I had listened to the Feedback on the latest mintCast and the tip about the Mint Cinnamon live disc having the grub rescue baked into the ISO.
    • Recorded 2 shows for HPR about restoring my Matchbox models, the first of which went out last Wednesday. This will be a short series as I will go through the process from dismantling the casting, right through all the work needed to get ready for paint and then reassembly,
  • Moss
    • I had a minor health setback, one of my lymph nodes in my face decided to “explode”. A few days later it went down and then one on the other side exploded. It is affecting my speech a bit, but the treatment is simple and it isn’t bothering me a lot today. It has now been more than a month since my auto accident.
    • I kept my distrohopping to a minimum, as I had to get DHD done. We had a great time, with our all-time longest episode thanks to Leo! After the show, I set up the Linux box I inherited with Linux Mint and OpenMandriva, effectively decommissioning the Galago Pro from everyday use. I later changed OpenMandriva to Bodhi 5.1, and was surprised to see that they jettisoned Midori, the default browser in 5.0, for Web. I can’t think of another distro using Web as default.  I eventually swapped Ubuntu Mate 20.04 on the Kudu for Kubuntu 20.04 plus the Studio tools. So I have Mint and Bodhi on the box, Mint, Kubuntu with Studio, and OpenMandriva 4.1 on the Kudu, looking for something new for the Kudu for the next DHD.
    • Friday night May 15th I did a half hour concert online. I was asked to do an hour, but my shoulder still hurts quite a bit and the act of draping it over the guitar (my picking hand) is still a bit painful so I talked them into a half hour. I went over a little bit, but overall I did really well and got a lot of good feedback … and a poor recording. Zoom does not handle guitar and voice on one mic that well.
    • I’m not sure what to check out for the next episode of DHD. The last thing I almost tried was Fedora, but that just got reviewed by Leo for us. Suggestions are welcome, but understand that I will ignore most of them as you guys seem to keep asking for things you *know* I won’t review. There is as yet nothing new in SuSE/Gecko. Solus uses a completely different bootloader that conflicts with multibooting.
    • I finished a few classes on StackSkills that I paid for over 3 years ago… nice that I have time to get to that. I can no longer call myself a full-fledged Linux n00bie, although I still feel like one, and I’m not sure some of those topics were covered as well as the presenter thought they were — actually, the class marked as Beginners Linux covered the same stuff and in better detail than the Linux Power User class did. I also signed my wife up for a website writing class a few years back, which she never got around to looking at, so if I get time I might go take that one.
    • I’m sending out more resumes for jobs in the computer field (5 last week, 6 this week), emphasizing companies dealing in used computers and working on bridging the digital divide, places that need someone experienced in installing distros.
    • We are getting near the end in reading Summer’s Knight, the 4th book in the Dresden Files series. We are enjoying it, although Dresden is still only getting by by the skin of his teeth and a lot of unexpected help. We are getting tired of hearing Dresden referred to as “the most powerful wizard X knows” when he can’t zap his way out of a paper bag at times.
  • Joe
    • Listened to the 3rd companion series for the Nate Temple novels “The Phantom Queen”
      • Enjoyable.  
    • Listened to a couple more from the main series now that I am all caught up on the companion series and now I am all caught up on that as well
    • Listened to the most recent book of the Mercy Thompson series
      • Always good books in this series. 
      • Think this one was slightly better than the last two books in the series which felt somewhat stagnant 
    • Listened to the most recent Hellequin book Sorcery Reborn.  Text aloud
      • This series is decent.  Has some high points in it.
    • Started the Netherworld Paranormal Police Department books
      • A bit juvenile but still enjoyable 
    • Almost time to pull something out of the all time favorites list and give a listen.  Kinda want something that is familiar.
      • Maybe WoT or Dresden or Dark Tower
    • Spent a lot of time fixing my 3D printer
      • After replacing the hot end for the second time the thermal shielding was damaged
      • Ignoramus that I am I tried to run it anyway but the pla+ ended up stuck to the hot end in such a way that I could not fix it.
      • So I replaced the entire hot end including heating element for the nozzle because the other one was stuck
      • Switched to silicone socks instead of the thermal cotton and kaptans tape
      • Started having a major problem leveling the bed, even after several tries I was still getting unbalanced and hard to stick prints
      • Tried adjusting the Z axis to make it level across the bed and was able to get one print that was ok to use.
      • Checked and my bed is extremely warped.  Going to try a glass plate overlay but I don’t think that will work so I have also ordered a new hotplate and will see how that goes.
      • Printed an altoids tin insert to hold microsd cards in a convenient way.
      • Seriously considering putting the Monoprice Maker Select V2 up on a shelf and getting the Ender 3 Pro which seems to have a lot more of a community and parts seem easier to get.
      • Got the glass bed and was still having a bit of trouble leveling but did get that portion dialed in.  
      • Also needed to get the infill settings dialed in because they were not holding up.  Doubling the width and increasing the percentage seemed to help
    • I found a set of stl files for printing your own headphones with 40 mm drivers.  
      • Really want to do this one 
      • Ordered some of the 40 mm drivers from China
      • Also started modifying the STL for 50mm drivers.  I am not very skilled at this yet so it is taking some time and I am sure that I will go through several iterations before I get something that is usable
      • But I have a solution for while I design my own: scaling.  I had to take two copies of the cup’s image and delete the hinge from one and everything else from the other.  Then I scaled the cup portion up to 125 percent which gives me mounting for a 50mm driver from a 40mm model.  Then I merge back in the normal size hinge.  I have no idea if that will work or not but it will be fun to try.  Also I will need to make a size adapter for the cushions to get it up 100mm. It is currently at 92.5 so it won’t be too much of one
      • Learning a lot about TinkerCAD
      • I also want to see what other modifications I can make.
        • Can I add bluetooth?
        • Open back / close back etc
    • My Raspberry Pi 4 is acting odd.  The desktop is unresponsive now and it is selective on what keyboard and mouse will work with it.  So nuke and pave time.  Probably also new microSD time as well.
      • Also looking for a printable stl that will allow me to stack a series of 2.5 for use with the Pi
    • Spending a lot of time sick and not doing much the last 2 weeks with various maladies.  

Londoner suggests Moss tries Slackware

THE NEWS: 

  • Linux gains popularity in April
    • Average of 1.5% to a single month score of 2.8%. Windows sees 2.5% drop in the same month.
    • Subquestion: What do you think needs to do to move the needle more?

Security Update: 

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, May 31, 2020. That’s 8PM 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.
]]> 4411 mintCast 335 – Be Our Guest https://mintcast.org/mintcast-335-be-our-guest/ Wed, 20 May 2020 04:08:48 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4409 Then, in the news, no ZFS for Mint, some honorable mentions on the Ubuntu section last episode, LibreOffice Alpha is out, and more!
In security, it’s GitHub’s turn for issues.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, I finally got my Pi4, Scott has been working from home, Moss plays for his peeps, Tony’s been reinstalling, and Joe’s been printing in 3d

Then, in the news, no ZFS for Mint, some honorable mentions on the Ubuntu section last episode, LibreOffice Alpha is out, and more!

In security, it’s GitHub’s turn for issues.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

  • Scott
    • Working about 50% Home and on-site at my employer
    • Golfed 3 times this week. Nothing stellar for any rounds (Mid-80s)
    • Working on MS Teams at work. Great little program. Best collaboration program I have used in a while. I am a big SharePoint fan for work, and this brings it all together. Just started to Learn more about Flows and Power Apps and see how they can help my team.
    • Got another friend to install Linuxmint on an old laptop for his kids this week!
  • Leo
    • Finally got a Pi 4, 4GB! Luckily I’ve been collecting bits slowly for it since they came out. I already had the power cable, SD cards and keyboard and mouse, so I only had to get the new micro HDMI cable and a case.
      • I tried getting it converted over to a recording box on the latest Raspbian. It performs quite well, even under load, if not a little hot. Audacity alone worked fantastic. Mumble worked great alone, also. However, when using them together, it seems like the two softwares will steal the mic from each other, not even leaving the hardware selectable in any lists!
      • I’m planning on setting everything up on Ubuntu 20.04, since it’s official now.
    • Kubuntu on the laptop, Fedora Plasma spin on the desktop. Duking it out for ease of use.
  • Tony H 
    • 3 or 4 weeks ago I badly cut the middle finger on my left hand which was initially very painful and made using the computer a little tricky as I didn’t want to bash it while using the keyboard.  
    • More playing with my model cars, I did a couple of more regular car models since the last time I was on the show, the Matchbox No64 MG1100 which is a cool little model with a little dog with his head out the back window. And a very old 1950’s casting of the Jaguar XK140, I ended up painting this little model twice after mucking up the paint job while detailing it the first time around. 
    • Baking and cooking (it was during a cooking session that I cut my finger on a can lid) I’ve also been baking sultana scones the homemade ones are so good compared to the shop bought ones. 
    • Playing with Kubuntu 20.04 on the Distrohoppers laptop for my review for episode 14 of DHD, I’m quite liking it and glad the issue with the keyring password manager before logging into the WiFi is not an issue as it was with the Q4OS Plasma release I was using last month.  
    • Attended the virtual meeting of my LUG/Makerspace, this has become a regular Saturday morning meeting and is keeping us connected during the lockdown, I try to be part of it as much as possible. One of our younger members lives across the road from me and I have only seen him online in the last 4 weeks when I could shout to him from across the road.
    • Reinstalling my Desktop PC after Kubuntu 20.04 screwed up my Grub and all efforts to rescue it failed, I wish I had listened to the Feedback on the latest mintCast and the tip about the Mint Cinnamon live disc having the grub rescue baked into the ISO.
    • Recorded 2 shows for HPR about restoring my Matchbox models, the first of which went out last Wednesday. This will be a short series as I will go through the process from dismantling the casting, right through all the work needed to get ready for paint and then reassembly,
  • Moss
    • I had a minor health setback, one of my lymph nodes in my face decided to “explode”. A few days later it went down and then one on the other side exploded. It is affecting my speech a bit, but the treatment is simple and it isn’t bothering me a lot today. It has now been more than a month since my auto accident.
    • I kept my distrohopping to a minimum, as I had to get DHD done. We had a great time, with our all-time longest episode thanks to Leo! After the show, I set up the Linux box I inherited with Linux Mint and OpenMandriva, effectively decommissioning the Galago Pro from everyday use. I later changed OpenMandriva to Bodhi 5.1, and was surprised to see that they jettisoned Midori, the default browser in 5.0, for Web. I can’t think of another distro using Web as default.  I eventually swapped Ubuntu Mate 20.04 on the Kudu for Kubuntu 20.04 plus the Studio tools. So I have Mint and Bodhi on the box, Mint, Kubuntu with Studio, and OpenMandriva 4.1 on the Kudu, looking for something new for the Kudu for the next DHD.
    • Friday night May 15th I did a half hour concert online. I was asked to do an hour, but my shoulder still hurts quite a bit and the act of draping it over the guitar (my picking hand) is still a bit painful so I talked them into a half hour. I went over a little bit, but overall I did really well and got a lot of good feedback … and a poor recording. Zoom does not handle guitar and voice on one mic that well.
    • I’m not sure what to check out for the next episode of DHD. The last thing I almost tried was Fedora, but that just got reviewed by Leo for us. Suggestions are welcome, but understand that I will ignore most of them as you guys seem to keep asking for things you *know* I won’t review. There is as yet nothing new in SuSE/Gecko. Solus uses a completely different bootloader that conflicts with multibooting.
    • I finished a few classes on StackSkills that I paid for over 3 years ago… nice that I have time to get to that. I can no longer call myself a full-fledged Linux n00bie, although I still feel like one, and I’m not sure some of those topics were covered as well as the presenter thought they were — actually, the class marked as Beginners Linux covered the same stuff and in better detail than the Linux Power User class did. I also signed my wife up for a website writing class a few years back, which she never got around to looking at, so if I get time I might go take that one.
    • I’m sending out more resumes for jobs in the computer field (5 last week, 6 this week), emphasizing companies dealing in used computers and working on bridging the digital divide, places that need someone experienced in installing distros.
    • We are getting near the end in reading Summer’s Knight, the 4th book in the Dresden Files series. We are enjoying it, although Dresden is still only getting by by the skin of his teeth and a lot of unexpected help. We are getting tired of hearing Dresden referred to as “the most powerful wizard X knows” when he can’t zap his way out of a paper bag at times.
  • Joe
    • Listened to the 3rd companion series for the Nate Temple novels “The Phantom Queen”
      • Enjoyable.  
    • Listened to a couple more from the main series now that I am all caught up on the companion series and now I am all caught up on that as well
    • Listened to the most recent book of the Mercy Thompson series
      • Always good books in this series. 
      • Think this one was slightly better than the last two books in the series which felt somewhat stagnant 
    • Listened to the most recent Hellequin book Sorcery Reborn.  Text aloud
      • This series is decent.  Has some high points in it.
    • Started the Netherworld Paranormal Police Department books
      • A bit juvenile but still enjoyable 
    • Almost time to pull something out of the all time favorites list and give a listen.  Kinda want something that is familiar.
      • Maybe WoT or Dresden or Dark Tower
    • Spent a lot of time fixing my 3D printer
      • After replacing the hot end for the second time the thermal shielding was damaged
      • Ignoramus that I am I tried to run it anyway but the pla+ ended up stuck to the hot end in such a way that I could not fix it.
      • So I replaced the entire hot end including heating element for the nozzle because the other one was stuck
      • Switched to silicone socks instead of the thermal cotton and kaptans tape
      • Started having a major problem leveling the bed, even after several tries I was still getting unbalanced and hard to stick prints
      • Tried adjusting the Z axis to make it level across the bed and was able to get one print that was ok to use.
      • Checked and my bed is extremely warped.  Going to try a glass plate overlay but I don’t think that will work so I have also ordered a new hotplate and will see how that goes.
      • Printed an altoids tin insert to hold microsd cards in a convenient way.
      • Seriously considering putting the Monoprice Maker Select V2 up on a shelf and getting the Ender 3 Pro which seems to have a lot more of a community and parts seem easier to get.
      • Got the glass bed and was still having a bit of trouble leveling but did get that portion dialed in.  
      • Also needed to get the infill settings dialed in because they were not holding up.  Doubling the width and increasing the percentage seemed to help
    • I found a set of stl files for printing your own headphones with 40 mm drivers.  
      • Really want to do this one 
      • Ordered some of the 40 mm drivers from China
      • Also started modifying the STL for 50mm drivers.  I am not very skilled at this yet so it is taking some time and I am sure that I will go through several iterations before I get something that is usable
      • But I have a solution for while I design my own: scaling.  I had to take two copies of the cup’s image and delete the hinge from one and everything else from the other.  Then I scaled the cup portion up to 125 percent which gives me mounting for a 50mm driver from a 40mm model.  Then I merge back in the normal size hinge.  I have no idea if that will work or not but it will be fun to try.  Also I will need to make a size adapter for the cushions to get it up 100mm. It is currently at 92.5 so it won’t be too much of one
      • Learning a lot about TinkerCAD
      • I also want to see what other modifications I can make.
        • Can I add bluetooth?
        • Open back / close back etc
    • My Raspberry Pi 4 is acting odd.  The desktop is unresponsive now and it is selective on what keyboard and mouse will work with it.  So nuke and pave time.  Probably also new microSD time as well.
      • Also looking for a printable stl that will allow me to stack a series of 2.5 for use with the Pi
    • Spending a lot of time sick and not doing much the last 2 weeks with various maladies.  

Londoner suggests Moss tries Slackware

THE NEWS: 

  • Linux gains popularity in April
    • Average of 1.5% to a single month score of 2.8%. Windows sees 2.5% drop in the same month.
    • Subquestion: What do you think needs to do to move the needle more?

Security Update: 

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, May 31, 2020. That’s 8PM 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.
]]> 4409 mintCast 334 – Natural 20 (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-334-natural-20-mp3/ Wed, 06 May 2020 03:51:13 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4385 Then, in the news, we’ll hit the Linux Mint Monthly News. And Releases! Ubuntu, Fedora, Manjaro and more increment by 1!
In security, GitLab pays $20,000
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

In security, GitLab pays $20,000

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

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

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

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

Download

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

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

In security, GitLab pays $20,000

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

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

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

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

Download

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

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

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

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

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

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 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 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!)
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