Microsoft – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Fri, 10 Jul 2026 06:56:51 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Microsoft – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false episodic CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast Microsoft – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 489 – You’ll Own Nothing, And Like It! https://mintcast.org/489-youll-own-nothing-and-like-it/ Wed, 08 Jul 2026 18:05:10 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=8093 · First up in the news: PlayStation and Microsoft goes fully digital, Amazon blames piracy, Brave goes “containerized”, and Immich has “Big Upgrades.”

· Then in our Wanderings: Joe does more with the mini rack and plans ahead, Jim drops Fire TV like a hot potato,

· In Check this Out: Myna lets you talk instead of type in Ubuntu

]]> · First up in the news: PlayStation and Microsoft goes fully digital, Amazon blames piracy, Brave goes “containerized”, and Immich has “Big Upgrades.”

· Then in our Wanderings: Joe does more with the mini rack and plans ahead, Jim drops Fire TV like a hot potato,

· In Check this Out: Myna lets you talk instead of type in Ubuntu

Link To Full Show Notes

The News:

What PlayStation going fully digital tells us about the PS6

Microsoft’s Next-Gen Xbox Could Be Digital-Only With New Disc-to-Digital Support

Amazon Blames Piracy Apps With Malware For Killing New Fire Stick Sideloading

Brave Says This is Not a Privacy Feature, But Using Containers Has Its Perks

Immich 3.0 Released with Big Upgrades for Self-Hosted Photo Libraries

Check This Out:

Ubuntu’s new ‘Myna’ AI lets you talk instead of type – here’s how

Listen to other Podcasts of the Linux Syndicate Family:

Join Bill, Majid, Eric and Charlie on Linux OTC, Linux Off The Cuff, for an unscripted and unpredictable conversation about all things Linux, Open Source and more.
Join Dale and Majid on Distrohoppers’ Digest to hear about their experiences and challenges with trying out different Linux distros.

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing, hosting & maintaining our Nextcloud & web servers.
  • Londoner for his contributions, from News to Time Syncs.
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about. Thanks Clem & Team.
]]> full 2:26:03 8093 487 – Goodbye US Office, Hello Euro Office https://mintcast.org/487-goodbye-us-office-hello-euro-office/ Tue, 09 Jun 2026 04:57:28 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=8067 First up the news

We have a great little tool in the “Check This Section”

]]> First up the news


We have a great little tool in the “Check This Section”

Link To Full Show Notes

The News:


Linux is Getting a Free Pass on Age Verification in California and Colorado


DuckDuckGo Installs Up 30% After Google Announced AI Search


New social features further Plex’s evolution from media server business


Euro-Office: General availability set for June 9


Acer Launching Streaming-Only Handheld Gaming PC Running Debian


Microsoft cut its engineers off from AI because the bill got too big — why AI might not take your job after all


EU plots long game against US digital supremacy


Brave Software inc releases a stable version of the Brave Origin Browser

Check This Out


Handy is a free, private, local AI speech-to-text app.

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing and for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo,
  • .initrd for the animated logo on Discord
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> full 59:32 8067 483 – Chucking at Charlie https://mintcast.org/483-chucking-at-charlie/ Wed, 15 Apr 2026 01:17:10 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7883 First up in the news: Mint 23 is named, Ubuntu 26.04 coming up and its already causing controversy, Firefox gets more features, big tech making some changes, and the governments of the world are meddling, in good and bad ways… and we welcome another host!

In security and privacy: Flatpak getting more secure allegedly

]]> First up in the news: Mint 23 is named, Ubuntu 26.04 coming up and its already causing controversy, Firefox gets more features, big tech making some changes, and the governments of the world are meddling, in good and bad ways… and we welcome another host!

In security and privacy: Flatpak getting more secure allegedly

Link To Full Show Notes

The News:


The code name for Mint 23 is “Alfa”


26.04 Beta


Does Ubuntu Now Require More RAM Than Windows 11?


26.10 could drop btfrs zfs and luks


Firefox Announces Built-in VPN and Other New Features Including New Mascot


Google Now Lets You Change Your Gmail address


Samsung’s Messages App Is Shutting Down


Microsoft Mysteriously Freezes Accounts for VeraCrypt, WireGuard, Windscribe


Why did the FCC ban foreign-made consumer routers?


NHS staff resist using Palantir software


France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins


Student Loans Fiasco, and its IT underpins


LibreOffice Drama: TDF Removes Collabora Developers in One Sweep

Security And Privacy:


Flatpak 1.16.4 Brings Important Security Fixes


CPUID website hacked: users report HWMonitor and CPU-Z delivering malware


Cloudflare aims to dethrone WordPress with EmDash, its new plugin-secure CMS

Check This Out:


New & Update Flatpaks – Nora


26.04 – Another view

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing and for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> full 1:47:56 7883 453 – Nice Rack, Joe! https://mintcast.org/453-nice-rack-joe/ Wed, 22 Jan 2025 05:00:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7359 First up in the news: Linux Mint 22.1 “Xia” released, Parallels can finally run x86 versions of Linux on Apple Silicon, German router maker is latest company to inadvertently clarify the LGPL license, Google and Linux Foundation form Chromium love club

In security and privacy: Microsoft patches Windows to eliminate Secure Boot bypass threat,

Then in our Wanderings: Joe enjoys prepares his rack , Dale does routing , and Eric shares 80s kid culture with his kid.

]]> First up in the news: Linux Mint 22.1 “Xia” released, Parallels can finally run x86 versions of Linux on Apple Silicon, German router maker is latest company to inadvertently clarify the LGPL license, Google and Linux Foundation form Chromium love club

In security and privacy: Microsoft patches Windows to eliminate Secure Boot bypass threat,

Then in our Wanderings: Joe enjoys prepares his rack , Dale does routing , and Eric shares 80s kid culture with his kid.

Full Show Notes Here

The News:


Linux Mint 22.1 “Xia” released joe


Parallels can finally run x86 versions of Linux on Apple Silicon


German router maker is latest company to inadvertently clarify the LGPL license


Google and Linux Foundation form Chromium love club

Security and Privacy:


Microsoft patches Windows to eliminate Secure Boot bypass threat

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> full 1:12:33 7359 445 – Wearable https://mintcast.org/445-wearable/ Wed, 11 Sep 2024 23:09:07 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7141 First up in the news: KITE OS educational Linux developed in Kerala, India, Microsoft rolls out Windows Recall again, Linus regrets merging BCacheFS again, 4M Linux 46 released;

In security and privacy: “Something has gone seriously wrong,” dual-boot systems warn after Microsoft update, “sedxp” Linux malware avoids detection for two years;

Then in our Wanderings: Majid is back from his travels, Moss, Joe, Eric gets his PineTime

In our Innards section: we do wearables

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

]]> First up in the news: KITE OS educational Linux developed in Kerala, India, Microsoft rolls out Windows Recall again, Linus regrets merging BCacheFS again, 4M Linux 46 released;

In security and privacy: “Something has gone seriously wrong,” dual-boot systems warn after Microsoft update, “sedxp” Linux malware avoids detection for two years;

Then in our Wanderings: Majid is back from his travels, Moss, Joe, Eric gets his PineTime

In our Innards section: we do wearables

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Full Show Notes Here

The News


KITE develops FOSS-based OS for public schools


Upgrades to Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Paused Due to ‘Critical Bug’


Microsoft will try the data-scraping Windows Recall feature again in October


Linus Torvalds Begins Expressing Regrets Merging Bcachefs


4MLinux 46 Mini Linux Distro Released with New Apps, Integrated LAMP Server

Security and Privacy


“Something has gone seriously wrong,” dual-boot systems warn after Microsoft update


Stealthy ‘sedexp’ Linux malware evaded detection for two years

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 445 445 Wearable full 2:13:07 7141 438 – Copilot Takeover https://mintcast.org/438-copilot-takeover/ Fri, 31 May 2024 23:26:32 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6940 First up in the news: Mozilla Reveals New Features Coming to Firefox, Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for NVIDIA Users, KDE Plasma 6.1 Beta Released With Wayland Explicit Sync, Input Capture Portal & More, KDE Plasma 6.1 Lands Dynamic Triple Buffering Support, Btrfs Sends In Fixes For Linux 6.10 & Restores "norecovery" Mount Option, Turkey bans Distrowatch

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

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

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

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

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

Full Show Notes Here

The News

Mozilla Reveals New Features Coming to Firefox

Ubuntu 24.10 to Default to Wayland for NVIDIA Users

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

KDE Plasma 6.1 Lands Dynamic Triple Buffering Support

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

Turkey bans Distrowatch

Security and Privacy

High-severity GitLab flaw lets attackers take over accounts

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

Microsoft unveils Copilot+ PCs with generative AI capabilities baked in

UK watchdog looking into Microsoft AI taking screenshots

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 438 438 Copilot Takeover full 1:35:08 6940 428 – 32 bit’s Days Are Numbered https://mintcast.org/428-32-bits-days-are-numbered/ Sat, 13 Jan 2024 00:46:59 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6556 First up in the news: Mint Monthly News, Fedora Asahi Remix Officially Released for Apple Silicon Macs

In security and privacy: Nothin'. We got nothin'.

Then in our Wanderings: Bill becomes “unstable”; Majid bricks and un-bricks; Moss is counting pixels; Joe …; and Eric does some Homebrewing

Download
]]> First up in the news: Mint Monthly News, Fedora Asahi Remix Officially Released for Apple Silicon Macs

In security and privacy: Nothin’. We got nothin’.

Then in our Wanderings: Bill becomes “unstable”; Majid bricks and un-bricks; Moss is counting pixels; Joe …; and Eric does some Homebrewing

  1. 00:00:00 – Intro
  2. 00:01:28 – News
  3. 00:36:06 – Bi-Weekly Wanderings
  4. 01:22:27 – Housekeeping and Announcemnts
  5. 01:23:16 – Wrap Up
  6. 01:25:44 – Outro
Full Show Notes Here

The News

Mint Monthly News

Fedora Asahi Remix Officially Released for Apple Silicon Macs

GNOME Makes New System Monitor Extension for GNOME Shell

Fwupd 1.9.11 Released With Support For New Algoltek & Luxshare USB Devices

Debian preps ground to drop 32-bit x86 as separate edition

Microsoft wants to add a Copilot key to your PC keyboard

Contact Info

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 428 428 32 bit's Days Are Numbered full 1:27:00 6556 395 – Buttery Smooth Experience https://mintcast.org/396-buttery-smooth-experience/ Wed, 28 Sep 2022 14:34:01 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5614 In security and privacy, 8 Year Old Linux Kernel Vulnerability Uncovered, and Plex gets exposed;
Then in our Wanderings, Moss reconfigures again, and Norbert contradicts himself.
In our Innards section, Mint and Gnome have lots to show us;
And finally, the feedback and a suggestion or two.
Download
]]> 1:08 The News
26:46 Security and Privacy
33:17 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
55:54 Linux Innards

First up in the news, AWK gets Unicode, GIMP out, Firefox improves its memory, Nitrux released, Unity is a Flavour, Microsoft drops Linux, Makulu adds to the confusion, and Debian wrestles with firmware;

In security and privacy, 8 Year Old Linux Kernel Vulnerability Uncovered, and Plex gets exposed;

Then in our Wanderings, Moss reconfigures again, and Norbert contradicts himself.

In our Innards section, Mint and Gnome have lots to show us;

And finally, the feedback and a suggestion or two.

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

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert, Londoner, Tony H, and all others for our audio editing
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 395 - Buttery Smooth Experience full 1:17:43 5614 393 – Quantum of Solus https://mintcast.org/393-quantum-of-solus/ Fri, 12 Aug 2022 23:38:08 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5584 In security and privacy, Sale of over a billion Chinese users’ data found, DuckDuckGo is (finally) blocking Microsoft trackers, and Linux 6.0 to have run-time verification for running on safety critical systems
Then in our Wanderings, Bill is hearing things, Moss is losing power, Joe is soldering on, and Norbert is taming the fox
Download
]]> 1:12 The News
16:00 Security and Privacy
49:28 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:30:48 Housekeeping and Announcements

First up in the news: Vanessa is finally here, so is the Linux kernel version 5.19, which was published from an M1 Mac by Linus Torvalds

In security and privacy, Sale of over a billion Chinese users’ data found, DuckDuckGo is (finally) blocking Microsoft trackers, and Linux 6.0 to have run-time verification for running on safety critical systems

Then in our Wanderings, Bill is hearing things, Moss is losing power, Joe is soldering on, and Norbert is taming the fox

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

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 393 - Quantum of Solus full 1:35:57 5584 390 – This is the Way(land) https://mintcast.org/390-this-is-the-wayland/ Thu, 30 Jun 2022 00:54:22 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5538 In security and privacy, Hertzbleed is coming for your CPU, and the EU is going after deepfakes.
Then in our Wanderings, Moss goes Custom, Norbert emerges, and Joe is Florida Man In our Innards section we discuss the various licenses in the world of open source software
And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:20 The News
15:47 Security and Privacy
21:07 Bi-Weekly Wonderings
35:42 The Linux Innards
56:58 Vibrations from the Ether
1:03:45 Check This Out
1:04:20 Announcements

First up in the news, Gnome wins Microsoft money, Firefox translates offline, Rocky overtakes the Red Hat pack, apps on KDE look more klear, Debian gets the Gecko treatment, Zoom gets Wayland screen sharing, Photoshop is kind-of–but not-really coming to Linux, and Nvidia contributes.

In security and privacy, Hertzbleed is coming for your CPU, and the EU is going after deepfakes.

Then in our Wanderings, Moss goes Custom, Norbert emerges, and Joe is Florida Man
In our Innards section we discuss the various licenses in the world of open source software

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Linux Innards

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • A cast of thousands for our audio editing, including Norbert, Londoner, Tony Hughes, and others. We continue to need volunteers for our audio editing, please contact us.
  • Bill Houser and Josh Lowe for their work on the website, and Bill Howser for hosting the Linode which runs our website
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about. Thanks, Clem!
]]> full 1:08:57 5538 386 – Microsoft’s Redemption Arc https://mintcast.org/386-microsoft-redemption-arc/ Wed, 15 Jun 2022 10:38:03 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5481 Download
]]> 2:32 The News
13:25 Security and Privacy
22:10 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:05:28 Announcements

First up in the news, NTFS is orphaned, a hare-brained C alternative, and some new Pop!

In security and privacy, Microsoft found it, and Musk open sources

Then in our Wanderings, Jorge is steaming right along, Joe is destroying more stuff, Norbert had a little too much linux, Moss is redoing EVERYTHING, and Bill is pulling his hair out.

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

The News

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 386 - Microsoft's Redemption Arc full 1:04:36 5481 379 – There Can Be Only One https://mintcast.org/379-there-can-be-only-one/ Thu, 10 Mar 2022 16:48:53 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5348 In security, Ubuntu Kernel Security Patches, FGKASLR gets closer to mainline, Data stealing malware hides on Linux servers, Go Daddy data breach
In our Wanderings, Joe does some 3d printing, Josh got a new monitor, Norbert switches OS’s, and Clayton looks back
Download
]]> 1:38 The News
25:43 Security Update
34:58 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:00:23 Announcements & Outro

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

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

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

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

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

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 379 - There Can Be Only One full 1:04:25 5348 375 – Linux! I Choose You! https://mintcast.org/375-linux-i-choose-you/ Fri, 03 Dec 2021 01:17:59 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5285 In security, more ransomware for Linux, EU wants more cyber security, and apt is now safer to use
Then in our Wanderings, Joe has bluetooth problems, Norbert goes mad scientist, Josh does a flip, and Tony has some sad news
Download
]]> 1:47 The News
17:04 Security Update
22:13 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
47:16 Announcements & Outro

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

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 375 - Linux! I Choose You! full 52:58 5285 374 – Mounted Archery https://mintcast.org/374-mounted-archery/ Wed, 17 Nov 2021 07:16:41 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5274 In security, A Dutch newspaper gets hacked, Azure is vulnerable, and AMD and Intel have more security flaws
Then in our Wanderings, Joe works on an xbox, Josh remodels a bathroom, Tony got a new phone and Norbert tells us about running arch
Download
]]> 1:49 The News
10:37 Security Update
20:35 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
41:38 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news, Linux Mint Monthly News, Firefox 94 released, Steam OS announcement, System76 Desktop announcement, Intel has been doing this for a long time and Nvidia released a fix

In security, A Dutch newspaper gets hacked, Azure is vulnerable, and AMD and Intel have more security flaws

Then in our Wanderings, Joe works on an xbox, Josh remodels a bathroom, Tony got a new phone and Norbert tells us about running arch

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 374 - Mounted Archery full 45:14 5274 373 – Ex-SUSE Me, Microsoft? https://mintcast.org/373-ex-suse-me-microsoft/ Wed, 03 Nov 2021 05:08:09 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5258 In security, an NPM library gets hijacked, Proton will not retain your data, Firefox implements GPC, and black Friday scams abound
Then in our Wanderings, Joe tries his hand at tv repair, Norbert plays with legos, Tony shops for a new pc, and Josh gets a new throne
Download
]]> 1:49 The News
10:37 Security Update
21:47 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
45:39 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news, Raspberry PI Zero 2 W, Xorg has something new, SUSE goes Edge, A new MX linux, and Microsoft Blunders

In security, an NPM library gets hijacked, Proton will not retain your data, Firefox implements GPC, and black Friday scams abound

Then in our Wanderings, Joe tries his hand at tv repair, Norbert plays with legos, Tony shops for a new pc, and Josh gets a new throne

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

  • Joe
    • https://github.com/bluppfisk/coinprice-indicator
  • Norbert
  • Tony
  • Nishant

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!>
]]> 373 - Ex-SUSE Me, Microsoft? full 50:34 5258 372 – Ryzen Sun https://mintcast.org/372-ryzen-sun/ Wed, 20 Oct 2021 04:49:53 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5244 In security Retpolines patches for performance and Azure Linux boot failures
Then in our Wandering, Joe has some Pi, Norbert edits video, Tony Updates a BIOS, and Nishant upgrades Fedora
Download
]]> 1:44 The News
18:21 Security Update
21:43 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
56:20 Announcements & Outro

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

In security Retpolines patches for performance and Azure Linux boot failures

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

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Bo for our audio production
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logg
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 372 - Ryzen Sun full 1:03:16 5244 mintCast 361 – The Launch Launch https://mintcast.org/mintcast-361-the-launch-launch/ Wed, 19 May 2021 06:30:07 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5067 Then, our news Audacity gets bought up, System76 Launches the Launch, and LibreOffice Lets you Search!
In security, the death of CAPTCHA
Download
]]> Download

2:16 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
38:33 The News
1:02:53 Security Update
1:19:36 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I start building, Joe writes with a pinecil, Tony upgrades, Josh fights a game, and Bo tries to leaf.

Then, our news Audacity gets bought up, System76 Launches the Launch, and LibreOffice Lets you Search!

In security, the death of CAPTCHA

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • We’re putting OGG to sleep. Forever.
    • Mp3 has been patentless for more than three years now and that’s free enough for us. It cuts down on back end workload since we do most everything manually when it comes to getting the show out there.
    • No need to change feeds! The mp3 will now come down in the OGG feed. Just don’t look under the covers, and hopefully absolutely nothing noticeable will change.
  • Moss extended hiatus
  • The New Saturday Show (mintNight? mintTalk? No official name yet.)
  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm US Central time on May 30, 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, initrd for the animated 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!>
]]> mintCast 361 - The Launch Launch full 1:27:49 5067 mintCast 355 – Deferred Update (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-355-deferred-update-mp3/ Wed, 24 Feb 2021 06:14:34 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4939 Then, in the News, so much controversy, Linux on Mars, VLC on the moon, Mint and mintCast make the cut, and more
In Security, patch Mint, patch the kernel, patch your browser
Download
]]> Download

2:09 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
59:34 The News
1:28:22 Security
1:40:00 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Mike shreds a new axe, I’m more and more impressed by Proton, Joe has frozen joints, Moss is going to be rich someday, Tony Hughes gets immunities, and Josh panics with a crowbar. 

Then, in the News, so much controversy, Linux on Mars, VLC on the moon, Mint and mintCast make the cut, and more

In Security, patch Mint, patch the kernel, patch your browser

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Mike
    • Finished reading 2 Mitnick books recently (Ghost in the Wires and The Art of Invisibility)
    • Bought a new guitar (Fender Newporter Special)
  • Leo
    • Path of Exile runs 95% as good as Windows via Proton Experimental
    • Played with Trinity Desktop Environment for a month
  • Joe
    • It has been cold in Texas which tends to slow me down because it hurts.
    • I did get a new 8 Tb hard drive for my server.  Transferred all the data from my 2 Tb onto it but I still need to swap it into the PC instead of the external enclosure.  Then I will be changing the name to match the 2 Tb drive and after I restart it should work fine with my Plex auto detecting.
    • Picked up 5 Raspberry Pi Picos for future projects but I have not found the right project for me yet
      1. Plus as of yet you can use Thonny which gives you an environment for micropython but I am waiting for arduino to get their UI up and running for it which they say they are doing so that I can more easily use c/c++ and more easily convert some of the pro micro code over.
      2. This will make things easier to build a usb controller although I think I will try  a few other projects first
    • I have spent a lot of time cooking and looking up recipes.  Mostly cause if I’m cooking in the kitchen that means that it is warm in the kitchen
      1. Got an air fryer / toaster oven combo that I have been using quite a bit to make healthier fish and chips.  
      2. Also made another batch of protein bars.  This time it was the caramel chocolate version instead of the Skor bar.  It does not firm up as much as I would like in the freezer but is still very tasty and the silicone dish that I used was very helpful as was adding a bit of nonstick to the wax paper.
      3. The burrito skillet was a big hit and I am looking for other recipes to add to my favorites list
    • Work was a little rough here in Texas with the record cold and snowfall
      1. For most places the cold and the snow that we got would not be a problem.  But because this area never gets that we are not prepared for such a thing.  We don’t have snow plows and salt on standby so things got a little crazy here
      2. Millions of people without power for extended periods of time.  Schools closed even though the majority of students are SFH right now anyway.  Road and business closures
      3. I was lucky in that my power was very stable at my house.  Because of this I also ended up working a lot more because most of my team was unavailable.  Lots of 14 hour days and lots of getting called back into work after hours because everyone else had lost connection
      4. While this was going on I also had a water pipe burst due to freezing.  It was fun.  The pipe actually burst in 2 places so the first fix didn’t work.  Thankfully I was able to get a plumber out pretty quick to get the work done.  Which is surprising considering how many people had the same problem including the local post office.
      5. The drain for the washing machine is also frozen so I will not be able to run clothes for a few days and I will need to remember how to do drywall soon after I am satisfied that the wall is dry
    • Been playing a lot of Borderlands 3 to pass the cold Texas days.  I am still liking it.  Also playing some Victor Vran on occasion.  
      1. Someone on Telegram mentioned that a redone version of Diablo 2 is supposed to be coming out.  I have to wonder if it will be playable on linux.  I know that you can easily get the old one to play on linux but Blizzard and Steam don’t have any kind of deal and probably never will.
  • Moss
    • There are updates taking OpenMandriva Lx to version 4.2. If you run them as upgrades and don’t read the blog posts first, you will have issues. I’ll talk more about that in Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 020, which we should be recording this week. I have a clean install on the FuzZ400 but have issues with the upgrade on my Kudu, all reported to the OMA Forum.  Distrohoppers’ Digest will also feature a brand new segment, Beautiful Failures. We will talk about the distros we *almost* got to review and what happened. Our most-downloaded episode, 018, has stalled out just below 700 downloads.
    • Listener Dylan Burger has been added to the growing team at It’s MOSS, and added a new feature: Distro Madness 2021. This features head-to-head choices between distros, with a winner emerging. We haven’t had many visitors to the site on a daily basis, so Dylan came up with this idea. The first round of voting is nearly over, so get your votes in now. We intend to have the voting for each round end on the Friday following each whole-numbered episode of mintCast.
    • I have a new sponsor on Sponsus. Every little bit helps, and I am grateful for the support.
    • My other project, All Women Housed, is taking some big steps forward. We are currently in the “almost” phase: almost on the shelves in two southern California grocery chains and in negotiations with a monster chain in Florida most of you have heard of. We have almost completed negotiations for online sales of produce and other products as well. I should have something to actually announce by next episode, don’t wanna jinx it. 
    • My mother’s estate should be settled in 60 days or less, and that will help a lot. She will finally be laid to rest on Friday, February 26th.
    • My wife wants a new computer and wants to learn computer art. I had my eye on a 12-core HP Z800 Workstation for her, but Leo convinced me the 8-core would be a better deal and it’s cheaper. I’ll get that when I get my income taxes back if it’s still there. 
    • We are now reading Book 10 of Dresden Files, Small Favor.
  • Tony Hughes
    • Same old same old here in the UK, still in Lock Down so not able to go anywhere so our Valentines meal was a delivery chinese. On a good note I had my first Covid Jab yesterday (Saturday 20th Feb) so I’m halfway to being a little safer.  
    • I have been doing lots of walking during lock down to keep fit and for the last week or so I’m starting to get some distance in with 5 miles a day the last 4 days.
    • Nothing much Linux wise although I did install EndeavourOS to one of my laptops, my remaining Toshiba Z30, I’ve just sold the other one with Windows 10 installed, I had been asked to do a dual boot with Mint, but Windows took over the boot process and I could not get it to boot into the boot selector or bios so that was a no go. Although since then, the guys gave me a way to get to the boot menu by crashing windows several times to confuse it, for future reference if it ever happens again.
  • Josh
    • Crowbar Kernel Panic the new official unofficial Linux Mint gaming podcast with hosts Bo and Me (Josh). This mintCast spinoff will dive into the nitty gritty of gaming on Linux. We will test games and launchers to see just how good gaming on Linux has become. 
    • SNOW! No seriously too much snow please stop…
    • Other than snow in my life I have actually switched fully over to Debian as my main server distro of choice. There are a few reasons for this. 
  1. It’s not controlled by one entity.
  2. It’s extremely static.
  3. It’s super flexible with iso’s that even include proprietary firmware.
  4. The installer is BETTER than Ubuntu.
  • I have also set up a Matrix-synapse with Debian on the backend all running on Linode. I cannot say enough good things about Linode, they are great. [Moss: And if you sign up with Linode and use the code “mintcast”, you will get exactly zero added benefits!]
  • My dad finally upgraded his TV woot! He got a 65” LG NANO90 4K TV and it’s so beautiful with some tweaking possibly by the user and possibly by AI. There are some caveats to having a 4K TV that I didn’t even know about till now.
  1. On default settings right out of the box the picture quality on 1080p or lower is really really bad.
  2. Netflix price gouging.
  3. webOS kinda sucks compared to Roku’s UI.
  4. Not all 4k or 1080p content is the same even on HD broadcast TV.
  • Last but not least, I am turning LMDE4 into a rolling release.

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on March 7, 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!>
]]> full 4939 mintCast 355 – Deferred Update https://mintcast.org/mintcast-355-deferred-update/ Wed, 24 Feb 2021 06:04:46 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4933 Then, in the News, so much controversy, Linux on Mars, VLC on the moon, Mint and mintCast make the cut, and more
In Security, patch Mint, patch the kernel, patch your browser
Download
]]> Download

2:09 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
59:34 The News
1:28:22 Security
1:40:00 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Mike shreds a new axe, I’m more and more impressed by Proton, Joe has frozen joints, Moss is going to be rich someday, Tony Hughes gets immunities, and Josh panics with a crowbar. 

Then, in the News, so much controversy, Linux on Mars, VLC on the moon, Mint and mintCast make the cut, and more

In Security, patch Mint, patch the kernel, patch your browser

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Mike
    • Finished reading 2 Mitnick books recently (Ghost in the Wires and The Art of Invisibility)
    • Bought a new guitar (Fender Newporter Special)
  • Leo
    • Path of Exile runs 95% as good as Windows via Proton Experimental
    • Played with Trinity Desktop Environment for a month
  • Joe
    • It has been cold in Texas which tends to slow me down because it hurts.
    • I did get a new 8 Tb hard drive for my server.  Transferred all the data from my 2 Tb onto it but I still need to swap it into the PC instead of the external enclosure.  Then I will be changing the name to match the 2 Tb drive and after I restart it should work fine with my Plex auto detecting.
    • Picked up 5 Raspberry Pi Picos for future projects but I have not found the right project for me yet
      1. Plus as of yet you can use Thonny which gives you an environment for micropython but I am waiting for arduino to get their UI up and running for it which they say they are doing so that I can more easily use c/c++ and more easily convert some of the pro micro code over.
      2. This will make things easier to build a usb controller although I think I will try  a few other projects first
    • I have spent a lot of time cooking and looking up recipes.  Mostly cause if I’m cooking in the kitchen that means that it is warm in the kitchen
      1. Got an air fryer / toaster oven combo that I have been using quite a bit to make healthier fish and chips.  
      2. Also made another batch of protein bars.  This time it was the caramel chocolate version instead of the Skor bar.  It does not firm up as much as I would like in the freezer but is still very tasty and the silicone dish that I used was very helpful as was adding a bit of nonstick to the wax paper.
      3. The burrito skillet was a big hit and I am looking for other recipes to add to my favorites list
    • Work was a little rough here in Texas with the record cold and snowfall
      1. For most places the cold and the snow that we got would not be a problem.  But because this area never gets that we are not prepared for such a thing.  We don’t have snow plows and salt on standby so things got a little crazy here
      2. Millions of people without power for extended periods of time.  Schools closed even though the majority of students are SFH right now anyway.  Road and business closures
      3. I was lucky in that my power was very stable at my house.  Because of this I also ended up working a lot more because most of my team was unavailable.  Lots of 14 hour days and lots of getting called back into work after hours because everyone else had lost connection
      4. While this was going on I also had a water pipe burst due to freezing.  It was fun.  The pipe actually burst in 2 places so the first fix didn’t work.  Thankfully I was able to get a plumber out pretty quick to get the work done.  Which is surprising considering how many people had the same problem including the local post office.
      5. The drain for the washing machine is also frozen so I will not be able to run clothes for a few days and I will need to remember how to do drywall soon after I am satisfied that the wall is dry
    • Been playing a lot of Borderlands 3 to pass the cold Texas days.  I am still liking it.  Also playing some Victor Vran on occasion.  
      1. Someone on Telegram mentioned that a redone version of Diablo 2 is supposed to be coming out.  I have to wonder if it will be playable on linux.  I know that you can easily get the old one to play on linux but Blizzard and Steam don’t have any kind of deal and probably never will.
  • Moss
    • There are updates taking OpenMandriva Lx to version 4.2. If you run them as upgrades and don’t read the blog posts first, you will have issues. I’ll talk more about that in Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 020, which we should be recording this week. I have a clean install on the FuzZ400 but have issues with the upgrade on my Kudu, all reported to the OMA Forum.  Distrohoppers’ Digest will also feature a brand new segment, Beautiful Failures. We will talk about the distros we *almost* got to review and what happened. Our most-downloaded episode, 018, has stalled out just below 700 downloads.
    • Listener Dylan Burger has been added to the growing team at It’s MOSS, and added a new feature: Distro Madness 2021. This features head-to-head choices between distros, with a winner emerging. We haven’t had many visitors to the site on a daily basis, so Dylan came up with this idea. The first round of voting is nearly over, so get your votes in now. We intend to have the voting for each round end on the Friday following each whole-numbered episode of mintCast.
    • I have a new sponsor on Sponsus. Every little bit helps, and I am grateful for the support.
    • My other project, All Women Housed, is taking some big steps forward. We are currently in the “almost” phase: almost on the shelves in two southern California grocery chains and in negotiations with a monster chain in Florida most of you have heard of. We have almost completed negotiations for online sales of produce and other products as well. I should have something to actually announce by next episode, don’t wanna jinx it. 
    • My mother’s estate should be settled in 60 days or less, and that will help a lot. She will finally be laid to rest on Friday, February 26th.
    • My wife wants a new computer and wants to learn computer art. I had my eye on a 12-core HP Z800 Workstation for her, but Leo convinced me the 8-core would be a better deal and it’s cheaper. I’ll get that when I get my income taxes back if it’s still there. 
    • We are now reading Book 10 of Dresden Files, Small Favor.
  • Tony Hughes
    • Same old same old here in the UK, still in Lock Down so not able to go anywhere so our Valentines meal was a delivery chinese. On a good note I had my first Covid Jab yesterday (Saturday 20th Feb) so I’m halfway to being a little safer.  
    • I have been doing lots of walking during lock down to keep fit and for the last week or so I’m starting to get some distance in with 5 miles a day the last 4 days.
    • Nothing much Linux wise although I did install EndeavourOS to one of my laptops, my remaining Toshiba Z30, I’ve just sold the other one with Windows 10 installed, I had been asked to do a dual boot with Mint, but Windows took over the boot process and I could not get it to boot into the boot selector or bios so that was a no go. Although since then, the guys gave me a way to get to the boot menu by crashing windows several times to confuse it, for future reference if it ever happens again.
  • Josh
    • Crowbar Kernel Panic the new official unofficial Linux Mint gaming podcast with hosts Bo and Me (Josh). This mintCast spinoff will dive into the nitty gritty of gaming on Linux. We will test games and launchers to see just how good gaming on Linux has become. 
    • SNOW! No seriously too much snow please stop…
    • Other than snow in my life I have actually switched fully over to Debian as my main server distro of choice. There are a few reasons for this. 
  1. It’s not controlled by one entity.
  2. It’s extremely static.
  3. It’s super flexible with iso’s that even include proprietary firmware.
  4. The installer is BETTER than Ubuntu.
  • I have also set up a Matrix-synapse with Debian on the backend all running on Linode. I cannot say enough good things about Linode, they are great. [Moss: And if you sign up with Linode and use the code “mintcast”, you will get exactly zero added benefits!]
  • My dad finally upgraded his TV woot! He got a 65” LG NANO90 4K TV and it’s so beautiful with some tweaking possibly by the user and possibly by AI. There are some caveats to having a 4K TV that I didn’t even know about till now.
  1. On default settings right out of the box the picture quality on 1080p or lower is really really bad.
  2. Netflix price gouging.
  3. webOS kinda sucks compared to Roku’s UI.
  4. Not all 4k or 1080p content is the same even on HD broadcast TV.
  • Last but not least, I am turning LMDE4 into a rolling release.

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on March 7, 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!>
]]> full 4933 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!>
]]> full 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!>
]]> full 1:24:25 4846 mintCast 337 – Bread Winner (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-337-bread-winner-mp3/ Wed, 17 Jun 2020 05:00:18 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4483 Then, in the news, Linux Mint 20 is in beta
In security, you gotta be brave to use Brave
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Dale’s been driving, Dann’s been migrating, Leo’s been checking out the beta, Tony Hughes spreads the car love, Moss is doing double-duty distrohopping, Joe reads again

Then, in the news, Linux Mint 20 is in beta

In security, you gotta be brave to use Brave

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Dale
    • I started out two weeks ago in Calexico, California.  I drove to Piedmont, South Carolina.  Then drove to Mountain City, TN.  From there I drove to Charlotte, NC.  I left Charlotte and headed for  Kingsport, TN.  I then drove to Nashville, TN.  From Nashville, TN I drove to Groveport, OH.  From there I drove to where I parked my truck.  Then I took an Uber home.
    • This past week I took my car to the dealer for service.  My friend called me after she walked out of work and found her car was making a grinding noise.  I helped her get it towed to a local shop.  Ironically she had an appointment for her car the next day.  I hung out with her the next day so she wouldn’t have to sit in the waiting room for many hours.  They finished her car and took her to pick it up.
    • The remainder of the week.  I spent doing research on Window Managers for my appearance on mintCast.  I watched YouTube on my Roku and chatted on Telegram.  I also installed my usual month of updates on my Solus Plasma, two Debian servers and Linux Mint on my spare laptop.
  • Dann
  • Leo
    • Updated to kernel 5.7 on my desktop the day after release.
      • Didn’t notice much of a difference in performance. Maybe a slight improvement in games but I don’t have numbers or anything.
    • Updated to 5.4 on my laptop now that it’s officially available in Mint 19.
      • The battery improvements I felt while testing out Ubuntu and Kubuntu 20.04 are back! My aging battery cells appreciate it.
    • Waited patiently as the ISO images were syncing to the mirrors. Grabbed it the first minute it was out.
      • Wanted to figure out to what extent snapd was disabled.
      • My fix was picked up by OMGUbuntu.
    • Staying home. More.
  • Tony H
    • I have been doing much the same as I said last show, the weeks since lockdown are starting to merge into each other and repeating each week.  
    • Trying to help out family, I sent a distant cousin who has learning difficulties as a result of a brain tumor when he was 18 months old, his mom told me that he loves cars and will love to see my collection when he can visit after this is all over, so I sent him a couple of models to add to his collection in the meanwhile, his mum said he was delighted to get a personal package and to find the cars inside, she sent me a picture of him playing with them with his other models. 
    • Making my own Elderflower herbal infusion, we have many wild elder trees within walking distance of our house so I picked a bag full during the week and did the infusion, with a little ginger extract this is delicious. 
    • I joined the BDLL Euro meeting last night, and as Leo was being talked about managed to get him to come and join in the meeting.
    • Today my personal hairdresser cut my hair, (my wife) I trimmed my beard myself a couple of weeks ago but I hadn’t had a hair cut since before christmas and missed the opportunity before lockdown so I was well overdue.
  • Moss
    • Been spending a fair bit of time in the Linux Mint Telegram group, run ably by J Arun Mani. I opened my mouth, as I often do, on the topic of not being able to fit more than one distro on a USB stick… and they gave me a solution. So I’ve been playing with that solution quite a bit… and you’re going to have to wait until Check This Out to find out what it is.
    • I’m so much ready for the next episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest that I’m doing two distros. My reviews have been fairly short anyhow, and KDE neon did not give me a lot of unexpected positives to report on. 
    • We had a power outage on the 10th, which showed that one of our little APC UPS units is in need of replacement. Another $50 out the door!
    • My wife’s M570 Logitech trackball started dying on her. I had promised to send a used M570 to a cousin who is poorer than us for over a year, and we’re doing OK now, so I bought one for him and one for my wife. It took less time for my cousin to get his by about 4 days even though they were ordered within minutes of each other.
    • I’ve been playing with Pearl OS 9, a name change from the previous version, Pearl Desktop 8… it’s based on Ubuntu 20.04, with a few Mint tools thrown in and some links I’d rather do without. It’s kind of odd, they want it to look exactly like old MacOS, and they pull that off rather well, but then have a base wallpaper that looks like it was made from a kid’s block drawing program. But the extra wallpapers fix that easily. 
    • I went to order a PineTab, and my wife didn’t understand what I was ordering and said we didn’t have the money. Next day she okayed the purchase — and the site had closed the order window. Whine.
    • I enrolled in an online class to learn HTML5 and CSS. I can do the class for free, *if* I complete it by July 31; if I want a certificate, I’ll have to pay for it, but they gave me a 15% off coupon…
    • My wife received her Permanent Resident Green Card. So she doesn’t have to recertify for 10 years. Due to Covid-19 and mass defections and firings at INS, we didn’t have to go in to a center for an interview, the nearest such center being Memphis, a 5-hour drive. And in The Dresden Files, we’re deep into the 5th book.
  • Joe
    • Read the Iron Druid series again
      • Takes about a week for me to get through but there was also a lot of music and podcasts during that time frame
      • The series really starts out well and then slides slowly down hill in quality
      • I stopped at the last book
    • Codex Alera by Jim Butcher
      • A good series that seems to get more complex as it goes on in much the same way as wheel of time
    • Hardware fun all around
      • Think I had mentioned last time around that I traded a pair of the Crushers for a HP TouchSmart with a broken screen
        • Well when Dustin was getting it ready for shipment another issue came up.
        • I did get the laptop but it would not power on.  No light when it was plugged in.
        • I took it all the way apart and removed the CMOS battery and reseated the power port. Then put it all back together
        • It still did not power on but I was getting a capslock blink code which indicates a bad motherboard
        • There was soda on the motherboard and I did go through with IPA and cleaned the whole thing up.  It looked pretty good and I had high hopes for it working. But no such luck
        • Also swapped the RAM so I could verify that it was not something simple
        • So with a bad motherboard and a shattered screen the cost of fixing it comes out to about the same as it would cost me to buy another one used.
        • So the best thing to do is use it for parts 
      • I had also commented last show about the low quality of my in-ear drivers and that I wanted to try a couple of things out while maintaining MMCX modularity
        • I ordered 2 possible solutions and both have worked out pretty well and sound quality is very improved.
        • Solution 1 was TIN Audio T2 HiFi 2DD Double Dynamic Drive MMCX in ears. A ready to go solution that I did not mind spending 50 dollars on because of how much time I spend with earbuds in
        • The quality is better but even with a good seal it was not that much of an improvement
        • The 2nd solution was a bit more custom.  I did my research to find some well-rated in-ear headphones and the 1more triple drivers kept coming up and I was able to find some broken ones on eBay for 15 dollars.
        • Also ordered a couple of different mmcx conversion solutions but I ended up using the CIEM-to-MMCX converters and some 3D printed end caps and tension relievers.  The CIEM connecters are basically two short prongs which were somewhat easy to add wires to but not many of the potential solutions I saw had any type of tension relief and I am hard on headphones so I designed my own.  It worked really well
        • The sound quality is incredible for in-ears.  On par if not better than the cans that I have
        • Very happy with the end caps that I designed and the modularity of the device
        • So happy with the overall quality that I purchased 1more triple driver bluetooth neckbands on eBay also broken for 18 dollars.
        • These would not turn on but came with all the accessories for the headset.
        • Wanted to try and do the battery fix but impossible to take apart without damaging.
        • Tested out a different adapter.  This was made for flush mounting on the earpieces but that means getting it right the first time and having no room for mistakes.
        • Instead I printed a tension relief adapter and cover and soldered onto the cable
        • Incredibly tiny solder points about 1mm apart
      • Also troubleshot and worked on a balance issue on the custom built XB700s more details available on the linux lugcast podcast if you want to hear about that process.
        • I am thinking there is some board damage or water damage that I have not found
        • Because there is also some issues with mic, even after doing a full swap
      • Never buy Insignia headphones.  I don’t care how good the price is.  They are going to suck and fall apart and be impossible to work on.
    • Worked some on my Raspberry Pi 4 to get it working properly again.
      • Was having a bit of trouble with the unifying receiver but it turned out to be an overheating issue so a usb extender fixed that problem
      • 3D-printed some stackers for the 2.5 inch drives that I have so that they could be put together and still allow for air flow.
      • I have a 7-port powered hub that I was using to power them but it did not have enough power throughput to keep all of them running so I am using the ThinkPad docking station that I have that has a very robust power supply.
    • Have been having trouble getting CURA to see my 3D printer when it is hooked up by USB.  A mostly new control board for the printer along with a new USB cable
      • lsusb sees the serial device and I have added the group permissions for dialout group.  
      • I am able to see the output from the printer using the Arduino IDE but CURA does not see it all. 
      • Someone mentioned that I could run Octopi from the Pi zero, so I may get that set up as I have a couple of them just sitting around.
    • Found some non optimized scripts on my server that was causing it to crash in the middle of the night so i can put off purchasing a new machine for a while longer.
    • De-oxite

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 28th of June 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.
]]> full 4483 mintCast 337 – Bread Winner https://mintcast.org/mintcast-337-bread-winner/ Wed, 17 Jun 2020 04:37:50 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4478 Then, in the news, Linux Mint 20 is in beta
In security, you gotta be brave to use Brave
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Dale’s been driving, Dann’s been migrating, Leo’s been checking out the beta, Tony Hughes spreads the car love, Moss is doing double-duty distrohopping, Joe reads again

Then, in the news, Linux Mint 20 is in beta

In security, you gotta be brave to use Brave

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Dale
    • I started out two weeks ago in Calexico, California.  I drove to Piedmont, South Carolina.  Then drove to Mountain City, TN.  From there I drove to Charlotte, NC.  I left Charlotte and headed for  Kingsport, TN.  I then drove to Nashville, TN.  From Nashville, TN I drove to Groveport, OH.  From there I drove to where I parked my truck.  Then I took an Uber home.
    • This past week I took my car to the dealer for service.  My friend called me after she walked out of work and found her car was making a grinding noise.  I helped her get it towed to a local shop.  Ironically she had an appointment for her car the next day.  I hung out with her the next day so she wouldn’t have to sit in the waiting room for many hours.  They finished her car and took her to pick it up.
    • The remainder of the week.  I spent doing research on Window Managers for my appearance on mintCast.  I watched YouTube on my Roku and chatted on Telegram.  I also installed my usual month of updates on my Solus Plasma, two Debian servers and Linux Mint on my spare laptop.
  • Dann
  • Leo
    • Updated to kernel 5.7 on my desktop the day after release.
      • Didn’t notice much of a difference in performance. Maybe a slight improvement in games but I don’t have numbers or anything.
    • Updated to 5.4 on my laptop now that it’s officially available in Mint 19.
      • The battery improvements I felt while testing out Ubuntu and Kubuntu 20.04 are back! My aging battery cells appreciate it.
    • Waited patiently as the ISO images were syncing to the mirrors. Grabbed it the first minute it was out.
      • Wanted to figure out to what extent snapd was disabled.
      • My fix was picked up by OMGUbuntu.
    • Staying home. More.
  • Tony H
    • I have been doing much the same as I said last show, the weeks since lockdown are starting to merge into each other and repeating each week.  
    • Trying to help out family, I sent a distant cousin who has learning difficulties as a result of a brain tumor when he was 18 months old, his mom told me that he loves cars and will love to see my collection when he can visit after this is all over, so I sent him a couple of models to add to his collection in the meanwhile, his mum said he was delighted to get a personal package and to find the cars inside, she sent me a picture of him playing with them with his other models. 
    • Making my own Elderflower herbal infusion, we have many wild elder trees within walking distance of our house so I picked a bag full during the week and did the infusion, with a little ginger extract this is delicious. 
    • I joined the BDLL Euro meeting last night, and as Leo was being talked about managed to get him to come and join in the meeting.
    • Today my personal hairdresser cut my hair, (my wife) I trimmed my beard myself a couple of weeks ago but I hadn’t had a hair cut since before christmas and missed the opportunity before lockdown so I was well overdue.
  • Moss
    • Been spending a fair bit of time in the Linux Mint Telegram group, run ably by J Arun Mani. I opened my mouth, as I often do, on the topic of not being able to fit more than one distro on a USB stick… and they gave me a solution. So I’ve been playing with that solution quite a bit… and you’re going to have to wait until Check This Out to find out what it is.
    • I’m so much ready for the next episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest that I’m doing two distros. My reviews have been fairly short anyhow, and KDE neon did not give me a lot of unexpected positives to report on. 
    • We had a power outage on the 10th, which showed that one of our little APC UPS units is in need of replacement. Another $50 out the door!
    • My wife’s M570 Logitech trackball started dying on her. I had promised to send a used M570 to a cousin who is poorer than us for over a year, and we’re doing OK now, so I bought one for him and one for my wife. It took less time for my cousin to get his by about 4 days even though they were ordered within minutes of each other.
    • I’ve been playing with Pearl OS 9, a name change from the previous version, Pearl Desktop 8… it’s based on Ubuntu 20.04, with a few Mint tools thrown in and some links I’d rather do without. It’s kind of odd, they want it to look exactly like old MacOS, and they pull that off rather well, but then have a base wallpaper that looks like it was made from a kid’s block drawing program. But the extra wallpapers fix that easily. 
    • I went to order a PineTab, and my wife didn’t understand what I was ordering and said we didn’t have the money. Next day she okayed the purchase — and the site had closed the order window. Whine.
    • I enrolled in an online class to learn HTML5 and CSS. I can do the class for free, *if* I complete it by July 31; if I want a certificate, I’ll have to pay for it, but they gave me a 15% off coupon…
    • My wife received her Permanent Resident Green Card. So she doesn’t have to recertify for 10 years. Due to Covid-19 and mass defections and firings at INS, we didn’t have to go in to a center for an interview, the nearest such center being Memphis, a 5-hour drive. And in The Dresden Files, we’re deep into the 5th book.
  • Joe
    • Read the Iron Druid series again
      • Takes about a week for me to get through but there was also a lot of music and podcasts during that time frame
      • The series really starts out well and then slides slowly down hill in quality
      • I stopped at the last book
    • Codex Alera by Jim Butcher
      • A good series that seems to get more complex as it goes on in much the same way as wheel of time
    • Hardware fun all around
      • Think I had mentioned last time around that I traded a pair of the Crushers for a HP TouchSmart with a broken screen
        • Well when Dustin was getting it ready for shipment another issue came up.
        • I did get the laptop but it would not power on.  No light when it was plugged in.
        • I took it all the way apart and removed the CMOS battery and reseated the power port. Then put it all back together
        • It still did not power on but I was getting a capslock blink code which indicates a bad motherboard
        • There was soda on the motherboard and I did go through with IPA and cleaned the whole thing up.  It looked pretty good and I had high hopes for it working. But no such luck
        • Also swapped the RAM so I could verify that it was not something simple
        • So with a bad motherboard and a shattered screen the cost of fixing it comes out to about the same as it would cost me to buy another one used.
        • So the best thing to do is use it for parts 
      • I had also commented last show about the low quality of my in-ear drivers and that I wanted to try a couple of things out while maintaining MMCX modularity
        • I ordered 2 possible solutions and both have worked out pretty well and sound quality is very improved.
        • Solution 1 was TIN Audio T2 HiFi 2DD Double Dynamic Drive MMCX in ears. A ready to go solution that I did not mind spending 50 dollars on because of how much time I spend with earbuds in
        • The quality is better but even with a good seal it was not that much of an improvement
        • The 2nd solution was a bit more custom.  I did my research to find some well-rated in-ear headphones and the 1more triple drivers kept coming up and I was able to find some broken ones on eBay for 15 dollars.
        • Also ordered a couple of different mmcx conversion solutions but I ended up using the CIEM-to-MMCX converters and some 3D printed end caps and tension relievers.  The CIEM connecters are basically two short prongs which were somewhat easy to add wires to but not many of the potential solutions I saw had any type of tension relief and I am hard on headphones so I designed my own.  It worked really well
        • The sound quality is incredible for in-ears.  On par if not better than the cans that I have
        • Very happy with the end caps that I designed and the modularity of the device
        • So happy with the overall quality that I purchased 1more triple driver bluetooth neckbands on eBay also broken for 18 dollars.
        • These would not turn on but came with all the accessories for the headset.
        • Wanted to try and do the battery fix but impossible to take apart without damaging.
        • Tested out a different adapter.  This was made for flush mounting on the earpieces but that means getting it right the first time and having no room for mistakes.
        • Instead I printed a tension relief adapter and cover and soldered onto the cable
        • Incredibly tiny solder points about 1mm apart
      • Also troubleshot and worked on a balance issue on the custom built XB700s more details available on the linux lugcast podcast if you want to hear about that process.
        • I am thinking there is some board damage or water damage that I have not found
        • Because there is also some issues with mic, even after doing a full swap
      • Never buy Insignia headphones.  I don’t care how good the price is.  They are going to suck and fall apart and be impossible to work on.
    • Worked some on my Raspberry Pi 4 to get it working properly again.
      • Was having a bit of trouble with the unifying receiver but it turned out to be an overheating issue so a usb extender fixed that problem
      • 3D-printed some stackers for the 2.5 inch drives that I have so that they could be put together and still allow for air flow.
      • I have a 7-port powered hub that I was using to power them but it did not have enough power throughput to keep all of them running so I am using the ThinkPad docking station that I have that has a very robust power supply.
    • Have been having trouble getting CURA to see my 3D printer when it is hooked up by USB.  A mostly new control board for the printer along with a new USB cable
      • lsusb sees the serial device and I have added the group permissions for dialout group.  
      • I am able to see the output from the printer using the Arduino IDE but CURA does not see it all. 
      • Someone mentioned that I could run Octopi from the Pi zero, so I may get that set up as I have a couple of them just sitting around.
    • Found some non optimized scripts on my server that was causing it to crash in the middle of the night so i can put off purchasing a new machine for a while longer.
    • De-oxite

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 28th of June 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.
]]> full 4478 mintCast 336 – Sneaky Snek (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-336-sneaky-snek-mp3/ Wed, 03 Jun 2020 04:55:30 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4442 Then, in the news, Gnome wins, Microsoft loses, Linux moves on
In security, GitLab goes fishing
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Erik gardens, Tony Hughes bakes cars, Moss throws everything up in the air, Tony Watts goes live, Joe fills his brain, Bo fights a snake, and Leo fixes an oven

Then, in the news, Gnome wins, Microsoft loses, Linux moves on

In security, GitLab goes fishing

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Erik
    • Planting our gardens. We live in the country with some land and we have 4 separate gardens. We’re working on the last one now which is a little behind schedule for planting
    • Reopened our office with a ‘soft reopening’ with the Coronavirus. Still have the majority of my staff working remotely but we’re able to come back into the office for various items. 
    • Testing new laptops with dedicated graphics cards for the CAD and 3D design software. Looking at Lenovo ThinkPads, HP, and MSI gaming laptops. 
    • Took a 600 mile round trip to pick up a machine for use at the business. Picked up 2 ‘mini-trucks’ for using on projects – design and construction projects. 
      • The trucks are Japanese over the road vehicles but not highway vehicles in the US (for the most part)
      • Full creature comforts with a regular cab, heat, A/C, radio, wipers, etc. 
      • Four-wheel drive but you drive on the opposite side (right side) and shift with your left hand – that takes some getting used to
      • Size of a UTV but with weigh about 2000 pounds but 5 feet wide and 11 feet long
  • Leo
    • Rocco recently released a Linux Spotlight featuring… me!
    • We fixed our oven!
    • Got show audio working! CMUS
    • Playing with Cloudready. Not too bad! Virtualbox is really easy to get going for anything Cloudready doesn’t do natively.
  • Tony H 
    • More work on my models and recording another episode for HPR about the process. I’m enjoying the process although documenting all the stages of the process takes a lot of time remembering to take pictures of the stages as I go along. 
    • I started to use one of my Toshiba Z30’s as my Zoom/Jitsi box as it is easier to move around and set up in the workshop when I need to join a Zoom or Jitsi call. I hadn’t switched this Laptop on for well over 2 months and still had to fully configure my Mint 19.3 install, ran all the updates and installed Zoom and everything is great. I joined the Makerspace/LUG via Jitsi the last few weeks, just a point that for some reason Jitsi seems to be better on Chrome/Chromium than FireFox where it is a little flakey. It does work but you may wish to alter the video resolution to get a smoother experience.
    • Found a bug in my install of Kubuntu on the Dell E7440 for the next Distrohoppers, when you suspend the laptop it will not reconnect to the WiFi network. I have to reboot to get WiFi back. This has happened a couple of times, but as I rarely suspend my laptops it is not a major issue and I’m not sure if this is an issue for others. I did do some research and this issue seems to go back to 2016 it looks like a WiFi driver issue according to the Ubuntu documentation. It does say update your computer but it is fully up to date on the latest 20.04 release.
    • Continuing to bake bread and other things, I made another 2 loaves of Sourdough yesterday. Although on Monday we treated ourselves to a delivery of a traditional British afternoon Tea, as it was the Bank holiday and part of celebrating My wife’s birthday during the week as we couldn’t go out for our usual meal.
    • Since the lockdown I have been going out daily for a walk as my normal exercise at the gym can not happen, this last 2 weeks I have now got over 62 days of walking in excess of 5000 steps a day, yes I know they say 10000 is the amount to remain fit, but us oldies are advised to do 150 minutes a week and I’m blasting that.
  • Moss
    • Yesterday during the show meeting, my Linux box just was not working right, I could hear Tony Hughes great, Joe pretty well, and everyone else was breaking up. I tried a bunch of things. Nothing worked. So. Less than 2 hours before the show, I decided to switch machines. I set up my Kudu, with the i7 CPU instead of an i3 but otherwise similar specs, and loaded Mint. I decided to try out the software in advance (about 13.30 prior to a 15.00 showtime), and found Audacity 2.4.1 was just not working. After asking a few questions of Leo and Tony with no resolution, I rebooted to Pearl OS 9, where Audacity 2.3.3 was working just fine. So I went to set up Mumble, and discovered that the version in the repos does not accept our certificate. Leo told me to get the snap, so I did, and it’s working fine. I think.
    • I got KDE neon loaded to my Kudu laptop, in preparation for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest. I got everything set up in case I wanted to use it for a podcast, and, for the first time, got HexChat set up such that I log right into the mintCast room with admin privileges. Of course, that means I will never use it for a podcast, ever. Everything else is set up except that I haven’t bothered to validate my Trakt.tv and real-debrid accounts for Kodi.
    • And then the trouble started. For some reason, whether I’m connected via either wifi or ethernet, I get a yellow exclamation point stating “Limited Connectivity”. I asked around a bit, and after determining it is using exactly the same kernel as Mint (so that is not the issue), I checked the KDE Community Forums and found others had the same problem, supposedly to be fixed soon in an update. This does give me something to complain about in my review next DHD.
    • The Linux box is cruising along. After a lot of chatting with the guys in Telegram and with Leo, it seems that I don’t really need to do much in the way of upgrading it. I need to get some connectors for the Molex and data cables to be able to use them for SATA, a new (larger) SSD, and that’s about it.
    • I finally got tired of loving the look of OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 but not being able to do much with it, so I looked around a bit and installed the new Pearl OS 9. You may remember me talking about Pearl Desktop 8 a few months back, it’s been relabeled and updated. I’m getting a lot of negative comments from the peanut gallery, to the effect of if I wanted a Mac desktop I should get a Mac, but that’s fine with me. It’s almost pure Ubuntu with some Mint tools, the desktop is hybrid XFCE and LXDE with lots of Compiz Fusion, and it still uses less than 800 Mb RAM. I had to strip some political stuff from it, as the dev is very much into Qanon and Alex Jones, as shown by the included links and apps.
    • I listened to the first 15 minutes of Brian Lunduke’s current version of Linux Sucks. These have been pleasant in the past, host aside, but this one was a complete waste of my time and I just stopped. Not the worst 15 minutes of my life but it was in the running.
    • My wife and I are now into Death Masks, the 5th book of Dresden Files. and are chugging right along. She just recently noticed that we had cut off reading Temeraire and suggested we might get back to it someday. I’m still unemployed, working pretty hard to change that but there aren’t many jobs out there yet. I sent out 6 resumes last week and got 3 of them back as bad addresses, one as a vacant lot. Did a bunch more research and sent three more out yesterday, two of them to the current addresses of those which got returned. It’s sad when you find computer company addresses on the Internet which are over 5 years old.
  • Tony Watts
    • Played a real live gig last week, at a brewery
    • “Attended” a virtual Clutch concert on Wednesday
    • Renewing PIA
    • Received velour headphone cushions for ATH-M50x
    • More testing with audio/video recording 
      • Audio interface successfully tested on Android phone and Amazon tablet
      • Successful FB Live test on both Thinkpad T480 and Dell 7130, using just web browser, audio interface and internal webcam (no streaming software)
      • Played a bit with OBS on Dell 7130
    • Kubuntu on the Dell 7130
      • Suspend works properly, have not always had good luck with that on other distros
      • Only issue encountered, rear-facing camera does not work in Kubuntu but also does not work in any other Linux distro I’ve tried.  Only the front “selfie” camera works in Linux (never tried Windows? Could be hardware issue for all I know)
      • Noted Chrome automatically has touch scrolling working as a default, upon install.  The included FireFox does not.  
  • Joe
    • Worldship Humility by RR Haywood
      • Really good book.  The action was steady but not overpowering.
      • High quality audio and a good story. Will be trying other titles from the same author
    • Brandon Sanderson sequel to Skyward called Starsight
      • Very enjoyable sequel.  Lots of new information in building the world
      • A good addition to what should be a solid series.
      • Because Brandon Sanderson just needed another really good book series
    • Delta V by Daniel Suarez
      • Really good book with some solid ideas in regards to mining in space
    • Influx by Daniel Suarez
      • An interesting book if less memorable
      • About the suppression of technology to control the advancement of society 
    • Second book in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero by William Gibson
      • This series has been difficult for me to get through.  I really want to like it but it is more a series that I would have to dedicate a lot more cycles to than I have available at any given time.  So maybe the next time I am on vacation…
    • Haven’t been spending enough time listening to the podcasts that I enjoy mostly because I normally listen at work and most of work lately has been taken up with meetings.  The joys of working from home.  I used to hate the days that I would spend 6 hours of the day in meetings and now it almost feels like the norm.
    • But i did make sure to listen to Leo on the Linux Spotlight and yes i will be talking more about headphones today.
    • Second pair of Sony XB700’s.  The ones I bought for parts so I could fix the first pair.  
      • Bad battery which is why I got them cheap.  Would not charge at all and would not turn on
      • Also I removed the drivers in them to use on the other ones
      • So none of the grill or ear pads were there either
      • I also had a pair of EarPollution Moguls that were in pretty bad shape and the only good thing they had going for them in the first place was decent drivers
      • It took several iterations and test prints to get all the dimensions correct but I designed and printed the grill and driver mount as well as an expanded ear cup mod. 
      • Used a method I saw on “My Mate Vince” YouTube channel to resurrect the battery.  Pulled the battery out and connected it to a PCB USB battery charger and monitored the charge with my voltmeter.  Voltage went from 0 to 3.7 volts very quickly.  I then disconnected the battery from the charger and resoldered to the headphones and verified that the built in charger could finish the job up to 4.2 volts
      • So the Sony XB700’s are now over ear instead of on ear and have 50mm drivers instead of 30mm drivers
      • I glued the drivers into place to prevent rattling and the volume is good although if I use the enhanced bass features too much I get a bit of distortion.  I do have other drivers on the way from china or i may pick up some better ones or pull the ones i have in an old pair of tritons
      • Testing the batteries over a long period of time before gluing all the new parts in place.  Am also looking at maybe making my own mounting screw holes since I was not able to use the originals.  This would allow for modifications and fixes in the future.  But for now it looks like the battery is completely restored and i have a second pair of headphones that are really good for all day wear
    • I also think i have ruined my music listening with this being stuck at home and getting to use cans instead of the hbs 770s.  I switched back to them for jogging the other day and normally while jogging i will listen to an audiobook or podcasts but instead i decided to listen to some metal.  The only thing that was going through my mind was how tinnie it sounded and how little bass there was.  This was with the better modular drivers that i had added and it still sounded horrible.  So I may be looking for other really good in-ear drivers that I can mod to use the modular connections and improve sound quality.
    • Or I may buy some MMCX in-ears that rate well.  Then try to build my own later.  I only need one good pair to start with because I can move them to all my modular headsets.  Still, at 50 bucks, that is a bit of a splurge for me for the 
    • Traded one of the Skullcandy Crushers with the 3D printed hinge for a HP Touchsmart
      • Also made sure to 3D print a spare hinge so that if the other one breaks i won’t be in a hurry to send another one.
    • Looking at building or buying a new tower computer for my server.  But not certain where i want to go with it
      • The mini ITX and micro ATX builds seem very cool and not as expensive as i supposed they would be but it seems a bit pointless if i am planning on adding 4 hard drives.  I don’t need a lot of peripherals added but i should put a decent graphics card on for transcoding with plex.
      • I could add in a graphics card to my current build as long as it is not trying to use board power and has a seperate power connector but the server that i have is still having problems where it overheats and crashes.  I may just try a full reinstall.
    • Spent some time helping listener Dustin get resilio sync set up so that I could easily transfer some of my audiobooks over to him so he has something to listen to at work.  
      • I did see that resilio sync is not the easiest thing to set up.
      • But I still recommend it as a way for transferring large files amongst devices.
      • Granted I usually use it to sync files across my own machines.
      • Also had a really good conversation about books and fiction and what writers are good and what writers aren’t.  Didn’t get too far down the rabbit hole but it was still a good conversation.
      • Sounds like I got a new person to check out the Stormlight Archive.  I like this because I don’t have too many people to talk to about my obsessions 
    • Also been trying out some small things with plex.  Right now I have turned on the function to use ram as a temp space for the transcoding.  Dont notice too much of a difference but does seem a bit more stable.
    • Received the replacement micro sd card for my pi but have not set it up yet.  I think that I will be going with the Ubuntu OS for that.  But i will be keeping my option to switch back to raspbian open in case i cant get netflix working.
  • Bo
    • Removing a snake from my car
    • DIY coffee roaster 
    • Krita for android in beta 

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE: 

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, June 14, 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.
]]> full 4442 mintCast 336 – Sneaky Snek https://mintcast.org/mintcast-336-sneaky-snek/ Wed, 03 Jun 2020 04:29:51 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4437 Then, in the news, Gnome wins, Microsoft loses, Linux moves on
In security, GitLab goes fishing
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Erik gardens, Tony Hughes bakes cars, Moss throws everything up in the air, Tony Watts goes live, Joe fills his brain, Bo fights a snake, and Leo fixes an oven

Then, in the news, Gnome wins, Microsoft loses, Linux moves on

In security, GitLab goes fishing

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Erik
    • Planting our gardens. We live in the country with some land and we have 4 separate gardens. We’re working on the last one now which is a little behind schedule for planting
    • Reopened our office with a ‘soft reopening’ with the Coronavirus. Still have the majority of my staff working remotely but we’re able to come back into the office for various items. 
    • Testing new laptops with dedicated graphics cards for the CAD and 3D design software. Looking at Lenovo ThinkPads, HP, and MSI gaming laptops. 
    • Took a 600 mile round trip to pick up a machine for use at the business. Picked up 2 ‘mini-trucks’ for using on projects – design and construction projects. 
      • The trucks are Japanese over the road vehicles but not highway vehicles in the US (for the most part)
      • Full creature comforts with a regular cab, heat, A/C, radio, wipers, etc. 
      • Four-wheel drive but you drive on the opposite side (right side) and shift with your left hand – that takes some getting used to
      • Size of a UTV but with weigh about 2000 pounds but 5 feet wide and 11 feet long
  • Leo
    • Rocco recently released a Linux Spotlight featuring… me!
    • We fixed our oven!
    • Got show audio working! CMUS
    • Playing with Cloudready. Not too bad! Virtualbox is really easy to get going for anything Cloudready doesn’t do natively.
  • Tony H 
    • More work on my models and recording another episode for HPR about the process. I’m enjoying the process although documenting all the stages of the process takes a lot of time remembering to take pictures of the stages as I go along. 
    • I started to use one of my Toshiba Z30’s as my Zoom/Jitsi box as it is easier to move around and set up in the workshop when I need to join a Zoom or Jitsi call. I hadn’t switched this Laptop on for well over 2 months and still had to fully configure my Mint 19.3 install, ran all the updates and installed Zoom and everything is great. I joined the Makerspace/LUG via Jitsi the last few weeks, just a point that for some reason Jitsi seems to be better on Chrome/Chromium than FireFox where it is a little flakey. It does work but you may wish to alter the video resolution to get a smoother experience.
    • Found a bug in my install of Kubuntu on the Dell E7440 for the next Distrohoppers, when you suspend the laptop it will not reconnect to the WiFi network. I have to reboot to get WiFi back. This has happened a couple of times, but as I rarely suspend my laptops it is not a major issue and I’m not sure if this is an issue for others. I did do some research and this issue seems to go back to 2016 it looks like a WiFi driver issue according to the Ubuntu documentation. It does say update your computer but it is fully up to date on the latest 20.04 release.
    • Continuing to bake bread and other things, I made another 2 loaves of Sourdough yesterday. Although on Monday we treated ourselves to a delivery of a traditional British afternoon Tea, as it was the Bank holiday and part of celebrating My wife’s birthday during the week as we couldn’t go out for our usual meal.
    • Since the lockdown I have been going out daily for a walk as my normal exercise at the gym can not happen, this last 2 weeks I have now got over 62 days of walking in excess of 5000 steps a day, yes I know they say 10000 is the amount to remain fit, but us oldies are advised to do 150 minutes a week and I’m blasting that.
  • Moss
    • Yesterday during the show meeting, my Linux box just was not working right, I could hear Tony Hughes great, Joe pretty well, and everyone else was breaking up. I tried a bunch of things. Nothing worked. So. Less than 2 hours before the show, I decided to switch machines. I set up my Kudu, with the i7 CPU instead of an i3 but otherwise similar specs, and loaded Mint. I decided to try out the software in advance (about 13.30 prior to a 15.00 showtime), and found Audacity 2.4.1 was just not working. After asking a few questions of Leo and Tony with no resolution, I rebooted to Pearl OS 9, where Audacity 2.3.3 was working just fine. So I went to set up Mumble, and discovered that the version in the repos does not accept our certificate. Leo told me to get the snap, so I did, and it’s working fine. I think.
    • I got KDE neon loaded to my Kudu laptop, in preparation for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest. I got everything set up in case I wanted to use it for a podcast, and, for the first time, got HexChat set up such that I log right into the mintCast room with admin privileges. Of course, that means I will never use it for a podcast, ever. Everything else is set up except that I haven’t bothered to validate my Trakt.tv and real-debrid accounts for Kodi.
    • And then the trouble started. For some reason, whether I’m connected via either wifi or ethernet, I get a yellow exclamation point stating “Limited Connectivity”. I asked around a bit, and after determining it is using exactly the same kernel as Mint (so that is not the issue), I checked the KDE Community Forums and found others had the same problem, supposedly to be fixed soon in an update. This does give me something to complain about in my review next DHD.
    • The Linux box is cruising along. After a lot of chatting with the guys in Telegram and with Leo, it seems that I don’t really need to do much in the way of upgrading it. I need to get some connectors for the Molex and data cables to be able to use them for SATA, a new (larger) SSD, and that’s about it.
    • I finally got tired of loving the look of OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 but not being able to do much with it, so I looked around a bit and installed the new Pearl OS 9. You may remember me talking about Pearl Desktop 8 a few months back, it’s been relabeled and updated. I’m getting a lot of negative comments from the peanut gallery, to the effect of if I wanted a Mac desktop I should get a Mac, but that’s fine with me. It’s almost pure Ubuntu with some Mint tools, the desktop is hybrid XFCE and LXDE with lots of Compiz Fusion, and it still uses less than 800 Mb RAM. I had to strip some political stuff from it, as the dev is very much into Qanon and Alex Jones, as shown by the included links and apps.
    • I listened to the first 15 minutes of Brian Lunduke’s current version of Linux Sucks. These have been pleasant in the past, host aside, but this one was a complete waste of my time and I just stopped. Not the worst 15 minutes of my life but it was in the running.
    • My wife and I are now into Death Masks, the 5th book of Dresden Files. and are chugging right along. She just recently noticed that we had cut off reading Temeraire and suggested we might get back to it someday. I’m still unemployed, working pretty hard to change that but there aren’t many jobs out there yet. I sent out 6 resumes last week and got 3 of them back as bad addresses, one as a vacant lot. Did a bunch more research and sent three more out yesterday, two of them to the current addresses of those which got returned. It’s sad when you find computer company addresses on the Internet which are over 5 years old.
  • Tony Watts
    • Played a real live gig last week, at a brewery
    • “Attended” a virtual Clutch concert on Wednesday
    • Renewing PIA
    • Received velour headphone cushions for ATH-M50x
    • More testing with audio/video recording 
      • Audio interface successfully tested on Android phone and Amazon tablet
      • Successful FB Live test on both Thinkpad T480 and Dell 7130, using just web browser, audio interface and internal webcam (no streaming software)
      • Played a bit with OBS on Dell 7130
    • Kubuntu on the Dell 7130
      • Suspend works properly, have not always had good luck with that on other distros
      • Only issue encountered, rear-facing camera does not work in Kubuntu but also does not work in any other Linux distro I’ve tried.  Only the front “selfie” camera works in Linux (never tried Windows? Could be hardware issue for all I know)
      • Noted Chrome automatically has touch scrolling working as a default, upon install.  The included FireFox does not.  
  • Joe
    • Worldship Humility by RR Haywood
      • Really good book.  The action was steady but not overpowering.
      • High quality audio and a good story. Will be trying other titles from the same author
    • Brandon Sanderson sequel to Skyward called Starsight
      • Very enjoyable sequel.  Lots of new information in building the world
      • A good addition to what should be a solid series.
      • Because Brandon Sanderson just needed another really good book series
    • Delta V by Daniel Suarez
      • Really good book with some solid ideas in regards to mining in space
    • Influx by Daniel Suarez
      • An interesting book if less memorable
      • About the suppression of technology to control the advancement of society 
    • Second book in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero by William Gibson
      • This series has been difficult for me to get through.  I really want to like it but it is more a series that I would have to dedicate a lot more cycles to than I have available at any given time.  So maybe the next time I am on vacation…
    • Haven’t been spending enough time listening to the podcasts that I enjoy mostly because I normally listen at work and most of work lately has been taken up with meetings.  The joys of working from home.  I used to hate the days that I would spend 6 hours of the day in meetings and now it almost feels like the norm.
    • But i did make sure to listen to Leo on the Linux Spotlight and yes i will be talking more about headphones today.
    • Second pair of Sony XB700’s.  The ones I bought for parts so I could fix the first pair.  
      • Bad battery which is why I got them cheap.  Would not charge at all and would not turn on
      • Also I removed the drivers in them to use on the other ones
      • So none of the grill or ear pads were there either
      • I also had a pair of EarPollution Moguls that were in pretty bad shape and the only good thing they had going for them in the first place was decent drivers
      • It took several iterations and test prints to get all the dimensions correct but I designed and printed the grill and driver mount as well as an expanded ear cup mod. 
      • Used a method I saw on “My Mate Vince” YouTube channel to resurrect the battery.  Pulled the battery out and connected it to a PCB USB battery charger and monitored the charge with my voltmeter.  Voltage went from 0 to 3.7 volts very quickly.  I then disconnected the battery from the charger and resoldered to the headphones and verified that the built in charger could finish the job up to 4.2 volts
      • So the Sony XB700’s are now over ear instead of on ear and have 50mm drivers instead of 30mm drivers
      • I glued the drivers into place to prevent rattling and the volume is good although if I use the enhanced bass features too much I get a bit of distortion.  I do have other drivers on the way from china or i may pick up some better ones or pull the ones i have in an old pair of tritons
      • Testing the batteries over a long period of time before gluing all the new parts in place.  Am also looking at maybe making my own mounting screw holes since I was not able to use the originals.  This would allow for modifications and fixes in the future.  But for now it looks like the battery is completely restored and i have a second pair of headphones that are really good for all day wear
    • I also think i have ruined my music listening with this being stuck at home and getting to use cans instead of the hbs 770s.  I switched back to them for jogging the other day and normally while jogging i will listen to an audiobook or podcasts but instead i decided to listen to some metal.  The only thing that was going through my mind was how tinnie it sounded and how little bass there was.  This was with the better modular drivers that i had added and it still sounded horrible.  So I may be looking for other really good in-ear drivers that I can mod to use the modular connections and improve sound quality.
    • Or I may buy some MMCX in-ears that rate well.  Then try to build my own later.  I only need one good pair to start with because I can move them to all my modular headsets.  Still, at 50 bucks, that is a bit of a splurge for me for the 
    • Traded one of the Skullcandy Crushers with the 3D printed hinge for a HP Touchsmart
      • Also made sure to 3D print a spare hinge so that if the other one breaks i won’t be in a hurry to send another one.
    • Looking at building or buying a new tower computer for my server.  But not certain where i want to go with it
      • The mini ITX and micro ATX builds seem very cool and not as expensive as i supposed they would be but it seems a bit pointless if i am planning on adding 4 hard drives.  I don’t need a lot of peripherals added but i should put a decent graphics card on for transcoding with plex.
      • I could add in a graphics card to my current build as long as it is not trying to use board power and has a seperate power connector but the server that i have is still having problems where it overheats and crashes.  I may just try a full reinstall.
    • Spent some time helping listener Dustin get resilio sync set up so that I could easily transfer some of my audiobooks over to him so he has something to listen to at work.  
      • I did see that resilio sync is not the easiest thing to set up.
      • But I still recommend it as a way for transferring large files amongst devices.
      • Granted I usually use it to sync files across my own machines.
      • Also had a really good conversation about books and fiction and what writers are good and what writers aren’t.  Didn’t get too far down the rabbit hole but it was still a good conversation.
      • Sounds like I got a new person to check out the Stormlight Archive.  I like this because I don’t have too many people to talk to about my obsessions 
    • Also been trying out some small things with plex.  Right now I have turned on the function to use ram as a temp space for the transcoding.  Dont notice too much of a difference but does seem a bit more stable.
    • Received the replacement micro sd card for my pi but have not set it up yet.  I think that I will be going with the Ubuntu OS for that.  But i will be keeping my option to switch back to raspbian open in case i cant get netflix working.
  • Bo
    • Removing a snake from my car
    • DIY coffee roaster 
    • Krita for android in beta 

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE: 

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, June 14, 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.
]]> full 4437 mintCast 331 – The Art of Tracking https://mintcast.org/mintcast-331-the-art-of-tracking/ Wed, 25 Mar 2020 05:15:53 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4303 Then, in the news, NPM gets acquired, OBS adds a number, Purism and Pinebook have new releases, Basilisk takes us back in time, and Gnome gets new features.
In security, Edge is coming, and it’s worse than we thought.
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

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

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> full 4303 mintCast 331 – The Art of Tracking (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-331-the-art-of-tracking-mp3/ Wed, 25 Mar 2020 05:15:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4301 Then, in the news, NPM gets acquired, OBS adds a number, Purism and Pinebook have new releases, Basilisk takes us back in time, and Gnome gets new features.
In security, Edge is coming, and it’s worse than we thought.
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

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

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> full 4301 mintCast 328 – Sigh-DPI https://mintcast.org/mintcast-328-sigh-dpi/ Wed, 12 Feb 2020 05:51:56 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4215 Then in our news, Linux Mint goes HiDPI, Proton open-sources its VPN, Kernel 5.4 makes long-term support waves, Wireguard lands in Kernel 5.6, and more.
In security, your data is not safe. But we already knew that!
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

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

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

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

Download

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

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

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

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

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

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> full 4213 mintCast 325.5 – Oracles Virtually Boxed In https://mintcast.org/mintcast-325-5-oracles-virtually-boxed-in/ Wed, 08 Jan 2020 07:30:37 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4108 And finally, our listener feedback
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we make our 2020 Predictions!

And finally, our listener feedback

LINUX INNARDS: 

2020 Predictions:

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

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

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

CHECK THIS OUT! 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

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

WRAP-UP:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> full 55:05 4108 mintCast 325.5 – Oracles Virtually Boxed In (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-325-5-oracles-virtually-boxed-in-mp3/ Wed, 08 Jan 2020 07:30:24 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4106 And finally, our listener feedback
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we make our 2020 Predictions!

And finally, our listener feedback

LINUX INNARDS: 

2020 Predictions:

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

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

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

CHECK THIS OUT! 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

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

WRAP-UP:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> full 55:05 4106 mintCast 257 – Websites for the IT professional https://mintcast.org/mintcast-257-websites-for-the-it-professional/ Wed, 23 Nov 2016 03:07:44 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3197 257]

Download

News:

Main Topic:

  • Rob and Isaac talk about their favorite websites that they use to keep their IT skills up-to-date.

Tips & Websites:

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

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

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

]]> full 3197