In security and privacy: Backdoor found in widely used Linux utility breaks encrypted SSH connections, Suspected Russian Data-Wiping ‘AcidPour’ Malware Targeting Linux x86 Devices

Then in our Wanderings: Moss needs some salt for his new battery, Bill goes vrroom vrroom in a big truck, Joe is getting Steamed, Majid chillaxes, and Dale is Scaling his NAS

• [skipto time=”00:00:00″] – Intro
• [skipto time=”00:01:48″] – News
• [skipto time=”00:18:55″] – Security And Privacy
• [skipto time=”00:34:12″] – Bi-Weekly Wanderings
• [skipto time=”01:33:03″] – Housekeeping and Announcemnts
• [skipto time=”01:34:16″] – Wrap Up
• [skipto time=”01:37:23″] – Outro

The News

Red Hat Announces Nova, a Rust-Based GSP-Only Graphics Driver for NVIDIA GPUs

Blender 4.1 Officially Released with Quality-of-Life and Performance Improvements

LinDoz Returns With Advanced AI To Revamp the MakuluLinux Lineup

The Journey of Linux’s ext2 Filesystem Comes to an End

Security and Privacy

Backdoor found in widely used Linux utility breaks encrypted SSH connections

Suspected Russian Data-Wiping ‘AcidPour’ Malware Targeting Linux x86 Devices

Contact Info:

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

Special Thanks To:

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

In security and privacy, Avrecon malware affects 70,000 Linux servers, turns them into a botnet, and we meet RCE Flaw and PyLoose Malware

Then in our Wanderings Joe has a bad reaction, Moss forgot to write something here, Bill more of the same, Majid pretends to be a socialist

The News

Mint 21.2 Victoria released

Canonical’s Leading LXD Engineer Quits

Ubuntu Plans to Ditch its ‘Minimal’ Install Option

Blend OS v3 Bhatura released

In a Blow to IBM, SUSE is Forking Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Security and Privacy

Avrecon infects 70,000 Linux Servers, turns them into a botnet

OpenSSH Agent RCE Flaw Let Attackers Execute Arbitrary Commands

PyLoose Linux Malware Mines Crypto Directly From Memory

Full Show Notes Can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

• Joe – Tllts.org,  linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, jb@mintcast.org, Buy Joe a coffee
• Moss – Full Circle Weekly News, Distrohoppers’ Digest, bardmoss@pm.me, I’m on Mastodon as @zaivala@hostux.social, and other contact information can be found at It’s Moss dot com
• Bill – bill@mintcast.org, Bill_H on Discord, @wchouser3@fosstodon.org on Mastodon also – checkout my other podcasts Linux OTC and 3 Fat Truckers
• Majid – drmajid@mintcast.org @atypicaldoctor on twitter, AtypicalAnaesthetist on instagram and The Atypical Anaesthetist Podcast on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6Uo4DsJE8fJmvo8npljbmx)

Special Thanks To:

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

In security and privacy, StackRot is here, and so is ProtonPass

Then in our Wanderings, Moss makes money, Joe goes 3D, Bill mics up, and Majid thumbs his nose at inflation

The News

Mint Monthly News

Steam Deck hits over 10,000 verified and playable games

Red Hat tried to address criticism over their new source code restrictions

LibreBoot, FOSS BIOS replacement, sees new release

Google Admits Users “Not Quite Happy” With New Search Engine

New Peppermint OS is out, based on Debian 12

New version of KaOS is out, Arch-“inspired” with Plasma

Judge rules White House pressured social networks to “suppress free speech”

Solus 4 is released

Security and Privacy

StackRot, a new Linux Kernel privilege escalation vulnerability

Introducing Proton Pass

Full Shownotes can be found here

Wrap Up

• Joe – Tllts.org,  linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, jb@mintcast.org, Buy Joe a coffee
• Moss – Full Circle Weekly News, Distrohoppers’ Digest, bardmoss@pm.me, I’m on Mastodon as @zaivala@hostux.social, and other contact information can be found at It’s Moss dot com
• Bill – bill@mintcast.org, Bill_H on Discord, @wchouser3@fosstodon.org on Mastodon also – checkout my other podcasts Linux OTC and 3 Fat Truckers
• Majid – drmajid@mintcast.org @atypicaldoctor on twitter, AtypicalAnaesthetist on instagram and The Atypical Anaesthetist Podcast on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6Uo4DsJE8fJmvo8npljbmx)

Special Thanks To:

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

In security and privacy, Tsunami comes to SSH

Then in our Wanderings Joe goes on a little trip, Moss musics, and Majid has toys

The News

Mint 21.2 betas have been released

Debian 13 gets a name

Ardour 7.5 Remaps Tempo Maps Editing, more

Red Hat now limited RHEL sources to CentOS Stream

Now Shipping: Opera One, first browser with AI

Security and Privacy

Hackers infect Linux SSH servers with Tsunami Botnet Malware

Full Show Notes Can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

• Joe – Tllts.org,  linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, jb@mintcast.org, Buy Joe a coffee
• Moss – Full Circle Weekly News, Distrohoppers’ Digest, bardmoss@pm.me, I’m on Mastodon as @zaivala@hostux.social, and other contact information can be found at It’s Moss dot com
• Bill – bill@mintcast.org, Bill_H on Discord, @wchouser3@fosstodon.org on Mastodon, @wchouser3 on Twitter, and wchouser3 on Facebook also – checkout my other podcasts Linux OTC and 3 Fat Truckers
• Majid – drmajid@mintcast.org @atypicaldoctor on twitter, AtypicalAnaesthetist on instagram and The Atypical Anaesthetist Podcast on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6Uo4DsJE8fJmvo8npljbmx)

We would like to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible:

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

In security and privacy, we meet Blacksuit;

Then in our Wanderings, Bill chases burning trucks, Moss is feeling the pressure, and Majid needs to stop spending money

In our Innards section, we discuss laptop battery life;

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

The News

Mint Monthly News – May 2023

All-Snap Ubuntu Desktop Will Be Available Next Year

Red Hat Will Stop Packaging LibreOffice as RPM for RHEL, Fedora

Mozilla Thunderbird’s Next Big Update Is Now in Beta

Windows XP activation algorithm cracked – keygen now works on Linux

Security and Privacy

New Linux Ransomware “Blacksuit”, looks like “Royal”

Full Show Notes Can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

• Joe – Tllts.org,  linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, jb@mintcast.org, Buy Joe a coffee
• Moss – Full Circle Weekly News, Distrohoppers’ Digest, bardmoss@pm.me, I’m on Mastodon as @zaivala@hostux.social, and other contact information can be found at It’s Moss dot com
• Bill – bill@mintcast.org, Bill_H on Discord, @wchouser3@fosstodon.org on Mastodon, @wchouser3 on Twitter, and wchouser3 on Facebook also – checkout my other podcasts Linux OTC and 3 Fat Truckers
• Majid – drmajid@mintcast.org @atypicaldoctor on twitter, AtypicalAnaesthetist on instagram and The Atypical Anaesthetist Podcast on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6Uo4DsJE8fJmvo8npljbmx)

We would like to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible:

• 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 other valuable contribution
• Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
• The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem … and co!>

In security and privacy, Google’s 2FA isn’t private enough;

Then in our Wanderings, I’m off to University, Joe is manacled to his office, Moss kicks the tires on the new Bodhi, and Bill migrates

The News

Arch Migrates Git

Ubuntu Makes “Significant Changes” to PPAs for 23.10

Fedora Onyx, Immutable and with Budgie, approved for Fedora 39

Google To Start Removing Inactive Accounts After 2 Years

Google Chrome’s 2023 UI Refresh on Ubuntu

Debian Votes to Reinstate Merged-usr File Movement Moratorium

Proton Unveils Family Plan

Red Hat Reveals Podman Desktop 1.0

Fedora Intends To Completely Drop X11 in Plasma 6

Thunderbird Gets a Brand New Logo

Security And Privacy

Google’s New 2FA Isn’t End-to-End Encrypted

Full Show Notes Can Be Found Here

Wrap Up

• Joe – Tllts.org,  linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, jb@mintcast.org, Buy Joe a coffee
• Moss – Full Circle Weekly News, Distrohoppers’ Digest, bardmoss@pm.me, I’m on Mastodon as @zaivala@hostux.social, and other contact information can be found at It’s Moss dot com
• Bill – bill@mintcast.org, Bill_H on Discord, @wchouser3@fosstodon.org on Mastodon, @wchouser3 on Twitter, and wchouser3 on Facebook also – checkout my other podcasts Linux OTC and 3 Fat Truckers
• Majid – drmajid@mintcast.org @atypicaldoctor on twitter, AtypicalAnaesthetist on instagram and The Atypical Anaesthetist Podcast on Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/6Uo4DsJE8fJmvo8npljbmx)

We would like to acknowledge some of the people who make mintCast possible:

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

In our Linux Innards, we review our 2021 predictions and make our new predictions for 2022.

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit. YouTube.

The Linux Innards

Our predictions for the new year

• Joe
  • Steam Deck will be a success and will contribute to the number of Linux machines in the wild
  • The Chip shortage will continue and prices on computers will remain high
  • Graphics card prices will somewhat return to normal as a new hardware competitor will come out that will be better for crypto than graphics cards
• Norbert
  • When using the proprietary Nvidia drivers on Ubuntu, Wayland will be at least enabled on Ubuntu 22.04 and will be the default session in 22.10
  • EndeavourOS will be in first place on DistroWatch on the default 6-month ranking list at some point during the year
  • GTK theming will still be viable with GTK4, but with libraries as opposed to CSS
  • Increased focus on Wayland will lead to development of the X12 protocol
• Josh Hawk
  • Steam Deck will succeed (not everyone will cancel orders)
  • SteamOS will only be really good on steam deck
  • Pop OS will have at least a beta of their new DE by end of 2022.
  • Community arguments about Gnome will worsen and lead to many leaving Gnome as users.
  • Alma Linux will become more popular than RHEL/CentOS Stream.
• Nishant
  • Gaming on Linux will pick up.
  • Fedora will lead the forefront in adoption of latest kernel/DE
  • I will make my foray into Linux System Administration.
  • Linux phones will double in number and power in 2022.
  • I am throwing my elbows out here, Linux will overtake Mac OS in market share by end of 2022
• Bill
  • The Steam Deck will not ship in February
  • Asahi Linux will gain hardware acceleration on the Mac

Check This Out

• Quick Close in Overview (Gnome extension)
  iNotch (Gnome extension)

Announcements

• Our next episode will be Sunday, January 9, 2021 at 2 pm US Central Standard Time, 8 pm UTC/GMT.
• Check when this will be in your local timezone
• Our next Saturday live stream will be Saturday, January 1, 2022 at 2 pm US Central Standard Time, 8 pm UTC/GMT.
  Check when this will be in your local timezone

Wrap-up

• Joe – Tllts.org, linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, jb@mintcast.org, Buy Joe a coffee
• Norbert – norbert@mintcast.org
• The Other Other Josh – jt@mintcast.org, Josh Thacker on Discord, and @Metal_FOSS on Twitter
• Nishant – nishant@mintcast.org,riconghost on instagram, riconghost@Github, Ghost.Ricon on DIscord, maverick00783 @ Steam
• Clayton
• Bill – Bill_H on Discord, @Wchouser3, Wchouser3 on Facebook

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!>

In our Wanderings, Joe does some 3d printing, Josh got a new monitor, Norbert switches OS’s, and Clayton looks back

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

The News

• Linux Mint Blog-November
• The European Commission Will Make its Software Solutions Open Source for Public Benefit
• The Sad State Of Web Browser Support Currently Within Debian
• Fedora 36 Planning To Run Wayland By Default With NVIDIA’s Proprietary Driver
• Firefox Relay is Now Out of Beta & Adds New Premium Plan to Help Protect Your Real Email Address
• Updated Rust Code For Linux Kernel Patches Posted

Security Update

• New Ubuntu Linux Kernel Security Patches for 6 Vulnerabilities
• FGKASLR Appears Closer To Mainline For Improving Linux Security
• New Payment Data Stealing Malware Hides in Nginx Process on Linux Servers
• Go Daddy Data Breach

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

• Joe
  • 3d printing, crypto, food
• Josh
  • Health, monitors, outdoors
• Norbert
  • Debian testing, Gnome, Japanese
• Clayton
  • The old days, SSD’s, printing

Announcements

• Our next episode will be Sunday, December 26, 2021 at 2 pm US Central Standard Time, 8 pm UTC/GMT.
• Check when this will be in your local timezone
• Our next Saturday live stream will be Saturday, January 1, 2022 at 2 pm US Central Standard Time, 8 pm UTC/GMT.
  Check when this will be in your local timezone

Wrap-up

• Joe – Tllts.org, linuxlugcast.com, MeWe, jb@mintcast.org, Buy Joe a coffee
• Norbert – norbert@mintcast.org
• The Other Other Josh – jt@mintcast.org, Josh Thacker on Discord, and @Metal_FOSS on Twitter
• Nishant – nishant@mintcast.org,riconghost on instagram, riconghost@Github, Ghost.Ricon on DIscord, maverick00783 @ Steam
• Clayton

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

• Norbert for our audio production
• Leo for timestamps and publishing
• Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
• Hobstar for our logo
• initrd for the animated Discord logo
• Londoner for our time sync
• Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
• Archive.org for hosting our audio files
• HPR for our backup Mumble room
• The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>

LINUX INNARDS:

What Did We Get Wrong?

• Joe
  • We will see many more operating systems that are optimized and working for the Raspberry Pi 4.  
    • https://itsfoss.com/raspberry-pi-os/ 
  • Probably also see a new slim version sometime this year
    • https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/compute-module-4/?variant=raspberry-pi-cm4001000 
  • Microsoft will push more towards applications that can run on either operating system.  We will still be blind to their evil plans.
    • Edge, Teams, no Office yet 
  • The announcement for Edge OS will be towards the end of the year
    • Nope
  • 3 or 2.5
• Leo
  • Microsoft Office will have a native Linux version released
  • Adobe Photoshop will have a native Linux version released
  • AutoCAD will have a native Linux version released
    • Nope, Nope, and Nope
  • Moss will record a Gentoo show
    • Moss has moved away from Gentoo but is getting closer to Bodhi, and even started a Bodhi Telegram group which is semi-official
  • Firefox vs. The World. Firefox will be the last popular non-Chromium holdout.
    • The key word is “popular”. At the current rate, that soon won’t include Firefox. Gnome Web and Safari (Mac only) are also still blink-free.
  • 1
• Tony H
  • Linux Driver support will continue to improve and more hardware manufacturers (Nvidia I’m looking at you) will develop open source Linux Drivers. 
    • Nope
  • I was banking on a New R.Pi revision if not a totally new model, I still think that adding M.2 support, as other SBC manufacturers have, is the way to go in the long term. But this will probably require a totally new board design and may still be a year or 2 away. It may be that someone designs an add on board that will provide this function, but if they do it needs to be a device that allows the drive to be the boot drive.  
    • As for Driver support not much has changed with this so that is probably a Zero  
    • But I nailed it in respect of the Pi, a new compute module 4 was released which if you get a board to plug it that has a PCIe slot you can add a M.2 SATA board and use this for the drive storage. Also the Pi 400 was also released which is a totally new model based on the Pi 4 chipset but clocked at 1800MHz and with a totally new layout that allows for a good passive heat sink across the whole of the board that sits in the Keyboard.
  • 2  100 percent
• Moss
  • Now that Canonical has agreements with Microsoft for WSL and Amazon for Ubuntu Pro and AWS, I predict they will begin (or continue, if they have already begun in secret) working on agreements with other megacorps such as Alphabet, Oracle, SAP, and Apache.
    • Nope. All wrong. Or they kept it quite well-hidden.
  • If they succeed with any one of these new alliances, they will be insulated from potential buyouts and takeovers. I therefore predict this is the year they go IPO.
    • If not-A then not-B. But SUSE is rumored to be heading for an IPO in 2021.
• Tony W
  • Maru OS will significantly expand supported devices
    • Will add support for a Oneplus device, very likely 3/3T
    • Will also add support for Galaxy Note devices, Note 9 and/or Note 10
      • Nope
  • We will see convergence on Pine64 devices, with Pinephone able to dock to peripherals and run full desktop applications
    • Oh, Yeah
  • A big box store will sell a PC preconfigured with Linux in 2020
    • Nope
• Oliver Kelly
  • End of Windows 7 support won’t increase the Linux desktop uptake
    • Point
  • Intel’s new Graphics card wont suck on Linux
    • Not released yet.
• Erik Lietz
  • Purism will go out of business – the Librem 5 phone endeavor will put it under
    (Purism’s reach into so many products will be their undoing and even with some products doing well, this will be too much for their business to sustain)
    • Although not out of business but Purism has been much much quieter in 2020 than they were in 2019.
  • The PinePhone will be an amazing product and success story for Pine64
    (I am waiting for the second offering after the Brave Heart edition. The PinePhone product development will set a ‘gold’ standard how to correctly launch new product)
    • Pine64 has been a joy to watch their activity in 2020. So much I have just received my Manjaro edition PinePhone. What a great product for $200.
  • An major industry specific software company (Adobe, Autodesk (for AutoCAD), or similar) will offer a Linux version for a flagship software product
    (Adobe, Autodesk, or another specific flagship program dedicated for a very specific task. Running natively, no Wine, no web apps – AutoCAD can already run as a web app)
    • Dud on this one… As a side note for our business we are looking to migrate away from AutoCAD.
  • Microsoft will offer Office 365 on Linux
    (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint at a minimum will be running natively on Linux, no Wine, no web apps)
    • Again a zero – although we are using Edge on Linux in the office for our web accounting systeming.
  • Linux preinstalled from a major hardware supplier will be available in big box stores available off of the shelf (a large hardware vendor (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc)
    • I claim a handicap on this one as with all the goings on people weren’t allowed in stores most of the year. Although, both HP and Lenovo in particular have made major releases with Linux including both Fedora and Ubuntu on a whole bunch of Lenovo products. [Moss: Don’t forget that Dell increased their offerings of Linux machines.]

What About Next Year?

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

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

• Clay Stone
• From Alex
• Brad Alexander
• Avinash

CHECK THIS OUT! 

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

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

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

• Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
• Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
• Archive.org for hosting our audio files
• HPR for our backup Mumble room
• The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>

LINUX INNARDS:

What Did We Get Wrong?

• Joe
  • We will see many more operating systems that are optimized and working for the Raspberry Pi 4.  
    • https://itsfoss.com/raspberry-pi-os/ 
  • Probably also see a new slim version sometime this year
    • https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/compute-module-4/?variant=raspberry-pi-cm4001000 
  • Microsoft will push more towards applications that can run on either operating system.  We will still be blind to their evil plans.
    • Edge, Teams, no Office yet 
  • The announcement for Edge OS will be towards the end of the year
    • Nope
  • 3 or 2.5
• Leo
  • Microsoft Office will have a native Linux version released
  • Adobe Photoshop will have a native Linux version released
  • AutoCAD will have a native Linux version released
    • Nope, Nope, and Nope
  • Moss will record a Gentoo show
    • Moss has moved away from Gentoo but is getting closer to Bodhi, and even started a Bodhi Telegram group which is semi-official
  • Firefox vs. The World. Firefox will be the last popular non-Chromium holdout.
    • The key word is “popular”. At the current rate, that soon won’t include Firefox. Gnome Web and Safari (Mac only) are also still blink-free.
  • 1
• Tony H
  • Linux Driver support will continue to improve and more hardware manufacturers (Nvidia I’m looking at you) will develop open source Linux Drivers. 
    • Nope
  • I was banking on a New R.Pi revision if not a totally new model, I still think that adding M.2 support, as other SBC manufacturers have, is the way to go in the long term. But this will probably require a totally new board design and may still be a year or 2 away. It may be that someone designs an add on board that will provide this function, but if they do it needs to be a device that allows the drive to be the boot drive.  
    • As for Driver support not much has changed with this so that is probably a Zero  
    • But I nailed it in respect of the Pi, a new compute module 4 was released which if you get a board to plug it that has a PCIe slot you can add a M.2 SATA board and use this for the drive storage. Also the Pi 400 was also released which is a totally new model based on the Pi 4 chipset but clocked at 1800MHz and with a totally new layout that allows for a good passive heat sink across the whole of the board that sits in the Keyboard.
  • 2  100 percent
• Moss
  • Now that Canonical has agreements with Microsoft for WSL and Amazon for Ubuntu Pro and AWS, I predict they will begin (or continue, if they have already begun in secret) working on agreements with other megacorps such as Alphabet, Oracle, SAP, and Apache.
    • Nope. All wrong. Or they kept it quite well-hidden.
  • If they succeed with any one of these new alliances, they will be insulated from potential buyouts and takeovers. I therefore predict this is the year they go IPO.
    • If not-A then not-B. But SUSE is rumored to be heading for an IPO in 2021.
• Tony W
  • Maru OS will significantly expand supported devices
    • Will add support for a Oneplus device, very likely 3/3T
    • Will also add support for Galaxy Note devices, Note 9 and/or Note 10
      • Nope
  • We will see convergence on Pine64 devices, with Pinephone able to dock to peripherals and run full desktop applications
    • Oh, Yeah
  • A big box store will sell a PC preconfigured with Linux in 2020
    • Nope
• Oliver Kelly
  • End of Windows 7 support won’t increase the Linux desktop uptake
    • Point
  • Intel’s new Graphics card wont suck on Linux
    • Not released yet.
• Erik Lietz
  • Purism will go out of business – the Librem 5 phone endeavor will put it under
    (Purism’s reach into so many products will be their undoing and even with some products doing well, this will be too much for their business to sustain)
    • Although not out of business but Purism has been much much quieter in 2020 than they were in 2019.
  • The PinePhone will be an amazing product and success story for Pine64
    (I am waiting for the second offering after the Brave Heart edition. The PinePhone product development will set a ‘gold’ standard how to correctly launch new product)
    • Pine64 has been a joy to watch their activity in 2020. So much I have just received my Manjaro edition PinePhone. What a great product for $200.
  • An major industry specific software company (Adobe, Autodesk (for AutoCAD), or similar) will offer a Linux version for a flagship software product
    (Adobe, Autodesk, or another specific flagship program dedicated for a very specific task. Running natively, no Wine, no web apps – AutoCAD can already run as a web app)
    • Dud on this one… As a side note for our business we are looking to migrate away from AutoCAD.
  • Microsoft will offer Office 365 on Linux
    (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint at a minimum will be running natively on Linux, no Wine, no web apps)
    • Again a zero – although we are using Edge on Linux in the office for our web accounting systeming.
  • Linux preinstalled from a major hardware supplier will be available in big box stores available off of the shelf (a large hardware vendor (Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc)
    • I claim a handicap on this one as with all the goings on people weren’t allowed in stores most of the year. Although, both HP and Lenovo in particular have made major releases with Linux including both Fedora and Ubuntu on a whole bunch of Lenovo products. [Moss: Don’t forget that Dell increased their offerings of Linux machines.]

What About Next Year?

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

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

• Clay Stone
• From Alex
• Brad Alexander
• Avinash

CHECK THIS OUT! 

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

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

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

• Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
• Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
• Archive.org for hosting our audio files
• HPR for our backup Mumble room
• The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>

Download

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

• Leo
  • Still playing with mics and their configuration. Especially in Linux. I may have no choice but to learn to live with Jack.
  • Have two setups now: The Behringer UM2 with the Behringer XM8500 as mentioned last show and a Focusrite Scarlett Solo with the Rode Podmic. Both XLR based setups.
  • The UM2 connected to either mic is fantastic. Very little noise compared to the MXL990 I had before.
  • The Scarlett Solo is where the issues start. The quality is awesome, but it seems Linux, or rather PulseAudio tends to trip all over itself when in use. Seems when one application is running sound, things are flawless. The moment another device tries to take priority of the mic or playback things can get unpredictable. These issues seem to only crop up when I’m using the input and output of the Scarlett Solo at the same time.

• Tony H 
  • So I finally got around to fitting the Icy Dock 2.5” x 4 Bay drive port into my tower PC this week. I have been having some issues with my Tower and decided to get a 1TB SSD to reinstall Mint 19.3 Mate as the main drive then use the Dock for Dual booting other Linux Distros. As the Dock has 4 bays and my motherboard only has 4 SATA connections the 5.5” DVD drive has been removed and all the discs including the 1TB are now hot swappable without needing to access inside the PC case. At the moment I have 2 128Gb SSD’s with Ubuntu Mate 20.04 Beta and Q4OS in 2 of the remaining 3 bays and all these could be installed with more than one OS, so lots of scope for hardware testing different Linux and BSD Distributions as I move forward. 
  • Time will tell if the reinstall has cured the issues I have been having with the PC and in the last few weeks particularly with Mumble constantly crashing, we shall see how things go this evening during the recording.
  • I continue to play with my matchbox models and this week have been restoring/customising some mark 10 Jags, a few Lamborghini Mazal’s and a couple of Ferraris, I also took delivery of a few display worthy models and a few for further restoration projects down the line.
  • I took part in the BDLL Euro edition last week and was able to go to bed at a sensible hour as it is between 8pm and 10pm on the Saturday evening my time, the same as the mintCast recording time, which is far more sociable for me, and you guys in the US get the opportunity to be part of 2 shows on one day. This morning it was 1am-3am my time so if I am a bit jet lagged you know why. 
  • My New headset arrived as I had damaged the 3.5mm jack on one of my others but this was not an expensive buy and I’ve still to get the mic to work acceptably for Zoom use so continue to just use it for listening to the audio and use my laptop’s microphone for audio in, it is actually surprisingly good if there is no background noise.
  • And finally myself and Moss recorded our 12th episode of Distrohoppers Digest despite my issues with Mumble we got through it, marking a year since we started. So it is onward into year 2, we may have a guest host for our next episode if we can find a mutually agreeable time to record, otherwise we may have our first Distrohoppers listener edition :-).        

• Moss
  • We had another wonderful episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest, our twelfth episode and the conclusion of our first year. I even had a tad bit of extra experience: Tony’s machine was dropping Mumble from time to time, so I set up and saved the Mumble Recording for the first time ever.
  • I tried setting up Solus once more. It absolutely refuses to use an existing partition for me. The installer looks just like Ubiquity, but there is no way to select *and change* a partition. I did try installing it as a sole distro and it worked just fine — which means it blew away three perfectly good distros doing so. I don’t think I’m going to be reviewing Solus again unless and until they change/fix that.
  • It looks as if I’m going to be reviewing Ubuntu Mate 20.04 for the next episode of DHD. I’ve also loaded Ubuntu Studio 20.04 Beta, but I’m not happy with it yet and XFCE is not my friend.
  • Thanks to Joe, I have a new Bluetooth headset, an LG HBS770. It works really great in all respects, except I couldn’t get it to connect to this computer before the show, which is probably my fault for deleting more Bluetooth from the machine than I could find to reinstall.
  • This past Wednesday, while driving for work, I got in a REALLY BAD auto accident, resulting in me having to be taken by ambulance to the emergency room. The car is totaled and so is my job. But I’m getting better and nothing is broken. I could barely move for the first two days with massive pain levels, but I’m only hurting REALLY BADLY today and sitting in my usual office chair. As I have covered this in our Telegram group, complete with video, I won’t go into it any more deeply here. I got well enough fast enough that I had my wife drive me to work yesterday and I drove my own car home… with a little pain but not bad. I couldn’t find anyone else to do it, as it is a stick shift and drivers were not being found.
  • I feel I’m misusing the Galago Pro 2, that it doesn’t quite fit my use needs. I’d like to move it to someone who could use it better, and get a 15.6” or 17” ThinkPad. I need the larger keyboard, and to a point the larger screen. According to eBay, what I could get for the Galago Pro — with an i5, 16 Gb RAM, 14” form factor, a 1Tb hard drive and a 256 M.2 drive — would get me a fairly nice ThinkPad with an i7 and 16 Gb RAM, and I don’t care about the size of storage as I have enough of my own. I posted a swap offer on Mastodon and a couple groups, but have garnered no interest as yet. Contact me if you’re interested, or I may take other means of moving it.
  • One of my domain names came up for renewal, and the registrar tripled the price. So I had to go through the effort to move nameservers. Mission accomplished.
  • We finished reading “Grave Peril” and started in on “Summer’s Knight”, the 5th book in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. So far it seems that Harry keeps getting deeper and deeper with no rest and no advancement. In a comparable series, Demon Squad by Tim Marquitz, the lead character, Frank, got stronger with each book’s events. Frank had a cast of characters who were introduced early and came and went as needed, Harry seems to keep inventing new friends and enemies each book although there are some notable holdovers. My wife seems to be more critical of both the main character and the direction of the series as compared to other series we’ve read as we get deeper in the series.

• Tony Watts
  • Live streaming music
    • Did a live 35 min set on Facebook last night.  Recorded on my back deck just using the phone’s microphone, this time
    • Attempted unsuccessfully to live stream with my old PC, old audio interface, and droidcam for live streaming.  Too glitchy but I think this is due to the underpowered Core Duo PC I was using
  • Purchased Presonus Studio 24C
    • • Will test this with Android, Dell 7130 
  • Helped a friend get set up for home vocal recording
    • • Pointed her to in-store pickup of Samson Satellite mic
      • TRS to TRRS adapter makes audio input into phone/ipad possible without an interface (in theory)
  • Played some games on Google Stadia
  • Updated Lineage 16 to 17 (Android 10 Update)
  • Have been watching Mr. Robot
  • Local breweries doing carry-out – highly recommend 

• Bo
  • Update on my wife’s exploded PC
  • pfSense and OPNsense
  • Resurrected a dead podcast

• Joe
  • Kim Harrison the Hollows.
    • The books have slightly improved and I did finish the series
  • Started the Nate Temple series By Shayne Silvers
    • Decent book series.  Not great but decent
  • Red Dwarf feature length
    • Not all I was hoping for but it did feed the addiction.  
  • Watched Dog Soldiers and VFW at the recommendation of the guys over at ECN
    • Really good movies 
  • Just got done with Eden 6 on Borderlands 3 and am back on Pandora.
    • Have not done much of the sidequests although I am playing through the DLC for the better weapons and experience
    • Think Eden 6 will be good for the next play through when I decide to go exploring
  • Got my 3D printer working.  Still haven’t done much printing yet
    • Cleared the clog and started testing different prints.
    • Was able to print a couple of parts but still dialing in the settings for the best print
    • Then it would not maintain temperature again on the hotend
    • So i pulled the board and checked it but everything seemed fine
    • After that I replaced the heating element for the hot end
    • I have to say it seems to be working much better and the power supply does not seem to be getting as hot as before.  Hopefully that is the last fix that i need to do on it for a while
    • But I did get to learn a lot taking it apart and putting it back together
    • Lots of work to get done on it but I am enjoying
  • Started messing around with blender and tinkercad and I have to say blender is way too power user for me at this time.
    • Tinkercad on the other hand was very easy to use the web version for the simple designs that I was creating
    • Plus a couple of youtube tutorials really helped out
  • Fixed a Sony XB700bt which is one of the few headsets with USB-C charging and a 30 hour battery
    • Just needed to replace the drivers on it as the first one I had ordered to make a bt receiver did not have any but turned out unsuitable for the task
    • It may have a 30 hour battery life but definitely not a 30 hour wear time.  I find them very uncomfortable.
    • So i am going to 3d print an adapter to increase the size of the earcups and see if that helps(what i am doing in tinkercad)
  • Tried out Q4OS on the 7140 with Plasma
    • Had a bit of trouble with the installation and the startup
    • But even beyond that I had trouble with the occasional kernel panic at startup 
    • When it did work it looked very familiar but I used to be a Kubuntu user way back when
    • Interesting issue with the gyros on the table.  It would not rotate but when the gyros were activated it would cause the keyboard and touchpad to quit working.  Sometimes the USB port would also quit working.  It would be a random amount of time before they came back if they were going to come back.
    • Also the occasional random restart but it is hard to judge on a tablet that isn’t exactly mainstream.
    •  Did have to manually install the drivers for audio in order to get it to see the card.  But although it could see the card it did not work.  
    • USB sound card also did not work. Along with Bluetooth headsets not working.
  • Listener Dustin purchased one of my turtle beach stealth headsets for his kid.  Thank you
    • Also sent me a couple of broken headphones that i am in the process of working on
    • Some Samsung in ear oems and a pair of monoprice DJ headsets
      • Mentioned that the speakers may be blown

The News: 

• Red Hat Names Paul Cormier President and CEO Tony H
• Firefox 75 Released Bo
• Mitchell Baker Named CEO of Mozilla Moss
• Phase One of Gnome’s Community Engagement Challenge Is Open Tony W
• Git Turns 15 Joe
• Linux Kernel 5.7 RC1 Released Leo

Security Update: 

• Newline Character Can Trick Git Into Giving Up Credentials
  • Credit for finding the vulnerability goes to Felix Wilhelm of Google Project Zero, and credit for fixing it goes to Jeff King of GitHub.

Announcements: 

• Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, May 3, 2020. That’s 8PM British Summer Time. 

Wrap-up:

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

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

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

Download

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

• Leo
  • Still playing with mics and their configuration. Especially in Linux. I may have no choice but to learn to live with Jack.
  • Have two setups now: The Behringer UM2 with the Behringer XM8500 as mentioned last show and a Focusrite Scarlett Solo with the Rode Podmic. Both XLR based setups.
  • The UM2 connected to either mic is fantastic. Very little noise compared to the MXL990 I had before.
  • The Scarlett Solo is where the issues start. The quality is awesome, but it seems Linux, or rather PulseAudio tends to trip all over itself when in use. Seems when one application is running sound, things are flawless. The moment another device tries to take priority of the mic or playback things can get unpredictable. These issues seem to only crop up when I’m using the input and output of the Scarlett Solo at the same time.

• Tony H 
  • So I finally got around to fitting the Icy Dock 2.5” x 4 Bay drive port into my tower PC this week. I have been having some issues with my Tower and decided to get a 1TB SSD to reinstall Mint 19.3 Mate as the main drive then use the Dock for Dual booting other Linux Distros. As the Dock has 4 bays and my motherboard only has 4 SATA connections the 5.5” DVD drive has been removed and all the discs including the 1TB are now hot swappable without needing to access inside the PC case. At the moment I have 2 128Gb SSD’s with Ubuntu Mate 20.04 Beta and Q4OS in 2 of the remaining 3 bays and all these could be installed with more than one OS, so lots of scope for hardware testing different Linux and BSD Distributions as I move forward. 
  • Time will tell if the reinstall has cured the issues I have been having with the PC and in the last few weeks particularly with Mumble constantly crashing, we shall see how things go this evening during the recording.
  • I continue to play with my matchbox models and this week have been restoring/customising some mark 10 Jags, a few Lamborghini Mazal’s and a couple of Ferraris, I also took delivery of a few display worthy models and a few for further restoration projects down the line.
  • I took part in the BDLL Euro edition last week and was able to go to bed at a sensible hour as it is between 8pm and 10pm on the Saturday evening my time, the same as the mintCast recording time, which is far more sociable for me, and you guys in the US get the opportunity to be part of 2 shows on one day. This morning it was 1am-3am my time so if I am a bit jet lagged you know why. 
  • My New headset arrived as I had damaged the 3.5mm jack on one of my others but this was not an expensive buy and I’ve still to get the mic to work acceptably for Zoom use so continue to just use it for listening to the audio and use my laptop’s microphone for audio in, it is actually surprisingly good if there is no background noise.
  • And finally myself and Moss recorded our 12th episode of Distrohoppers Digest despite my issues with Mumble we got through it, marking a year since we started. So it is onward into year 2, we may have a guest host for our next episode if we can find a mutually agreeable time to record, otherwise we may have our first Distrohoppers listener edition :-).        

• Moss
  • We had another wonderful episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest, our twelfth episode and the conclusion of our first year. I even had a tad bit of extra experience: Tony’s machine was dropping Mumble from time to time, so I set up and saved the Mumble Recording for the first time ever.
  • I tried setting up Solus once more. It absolutely refuses to use an existing partition for me. The installer looks just like Ubiquity, but there is no way to select *and change* a partition. I did try installing it as a sole distro and it worked just fine — which means it blew away three perfectly good distros doing so. I don’t think I’m going to be reviewing Solus again unless and until they change/fix that.
  • It looks as if I’m going to be reviewing Ubuntu Mate 20.04 for the next episode of DHD. I’ve also loaded Ubuntu Studio 20.04 Beta, but I’m not happy with it yet and XFCE is not my friend.
  • Thanks to Joe, I have a new Bluetooth headset, an LG HBS770. It works really great in all respects, except I couldn’t get it to connect to this computer before the show, which is probably my fault for deleting more Bluetooth from the machine than I could find to reinstall.
  • This past Wednesday, while driving for work, I got in a REALLY BAD auto accident, resulting in me having to be taken by ambulance to the emergency room. The car is totaled and so is my job. But I’m getting better and nothing is broken. I could barely move for the first two days with massive pain levels, but I’m only hurting REALLY BADLY today and sitting in my usual office chair. As I have covered this in our Telegram group, complete with video, I won’t go into it any more deeply here. I got well enough fast enough that I had my wife drive me to work yesterday and I drove my own car home… with a little pain but not bad. I couldn’t find anyone else to do it, as it is a stick shift and drivers were not being found.
  • I feel I’m misusing the Galago Pro 2, that it doesn’t quite fit my use needs. I’d like to move it to someone who could use it better, and get a 15.6” or 17” ThinkPad. I need the larger keyboard, and to a point the larger screen. According to eBay, what I could get for the Galago Pro — with an i5, 16 Gb RAM, 14” form factor, a 1Tb hard drive and a 256 M.2 drive — would get me a fairly nice ThinkPad with an i7 and 16 Gb RAM, and I don’t care about the size of storage as I have enough of my own. I posted a swap offer on Mastodon and a couple groups, but have garnered no interest as yet. Contact me if you’re interested, or I may take other means of moving it.
  • One of my domain names came up for renewal, and the registrar tripled the price. So I had to go through the effort to move nameservers. Mission accomplished.
  • We finished reading “Grave Peril” and started in on “Summer’s Knight”, the 5th book in the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. So far it seems that Harry keeps getting deeper and deeper with no rest and no advancement. In a comparable series, Demon Squad by Tim Marquitz, the lead character, Frank, got stronger with each book’s events. Frank had a cast of characters who were introduced early and came and went as needed, Harry seems to keep inventing new friends and enemies each book although there are some notable holdovers. My wife seems to be more critical of both the main character and the direction of the series as compared to other series we’ve read as we get deeper in the series.

• Tony Watts
  • Live streaming music
    • Did a live 35 min set on Facebook last night.  Recorded on my back deck just using the phone’s microphone, this time
    • Attempted unsuccessfully to live stream with my old PC, old audio interface, and droidcam for live streaming.  Too glitchy but I think this is due to the underpowered Core Duo PC I was using
  • Purchased Presonus Studio 24C
    • • Will test this with Android, Dell 7130 
  • Helped a friend get set up for home vocal recording
    • • Pointed her to in-store pickup of Samson Satellite mic
      • TRS to TRRS adapter makes audio input into phone/ipad possible without an interface (in theory)
  • Played some games on Google Stadia
  • Updated Lineage 16 to 17 (Android 10 Update)
  • Have been watching Mr. Robot
  • Local breweries doing carry-out – highly recommend 

• Bo
  • Update on my wife’s exploded PC
  • pfSense and OPNsense
  • Resurrected a dead podcast

• Joe
  • Kim Harrison the Hollows.
    • The books have slightly improved and I did finish the series
  • Started the Nate Temple series By Shayne Silvers
    • Decent book series.  Not great but decent
  • Red Dwarf feature length
    • Not all I was hoping for but it did feed the addiction.  
  • Watched Dog Soldiers and VFW at the recommendation of the guys over at ECN
    • Really good movies 
  • Just got done with Eden 6 on Borderlands 3 and am back on Pandora.
    • Have not done much of the sidequests although I am playing through the DLC for the better weapons and experience
    • Think Eden 6 will be good for the next play through when I decide to go exploring
  • Got my 3D printer working.  Still haven’t done much printing yet
    • Cleared the clog and started testing different prints.
    • Was able to print a couple of parts but still dialing in the settings for the best print
    • Then it would not maintain temperature again on the hotend
    • So i pulled the board and checked it but everything seemed fine
    • After that I replaced the heating element for the hot end
    • I have to say it seems to be working much better and the power supply does not seem to be getting as hot as before.  Hopefully that is the last fix that i need to do on it for a while
    • But I did get to learn a lot taking it apart and putting it back together
    • Lots of work to get done on it but I am enjoying
  • Started messing around with blender and tinkercad and I have to say blender is way too power user for me at this time.
    • Tinkercad on the other hand was very easy to use the web version for the simple designs that I was creating
    • Plus a couple of youtube tutorials really helped out
  • Fixed a Sony XB700bt which is one of the few headsets with USB-C charging and a 30 hour battery
    • Just needed to replace the drivers on it as the first one I had ordered to make a bt receiver did not have any but turned out unsuitable for the task
    • It may have a 30 hour battery life but definitely not a 30 hour wear time.  I find them very uncomfortable.
    • So i am going to 3d print an adapter to increase the size of the earcups and see if that helps(what i am doing in tinkercad)
  • Tried out Q4OS on the 7140 with Plasma
    • Had a bit of trouble with the installation and the startup
    • But even beyond that I had trouble with the occasional kernel panic at startup 
    • When it did work it looked very familiar but I used to be a Kubuntu user way back when
    • Interesting issue with the gyros on the table.  It would not rotate but when the gyros were activated it would cause the keyboard and touchpad to quit working.  Sometimes the USB port would also quit working.  It would be a random amount of time before they came back if they were going to come back.
    • Also the occasional random restart but it is hard to judge on a tablet that isn’t exactly mainstream.
    •  Did have to manually install the drivers for audio in order to get it to see the card.  But although it could see the card it did not work.  
    • USB sound card also did not work. Along with Bluetooth headsets not working.
  • Listener Dustin purchased one of my turtle beach stealth headsets for his kid.  Thank you
    • Also sent me a couple of broken headphones that i am in the process of working on
    • Some Samsung in ear oems and a pair of monoprice DJ headsets
      • Mentioned that the speakers may be blown

The News: 

• Red Hat Names Paul Cormier President and CEO Tony H
• Firefox 75 Released Bo
• Mitchell Baker Named CEO of Mozilla Moss
• Phase One of Gnome’s Community Engagement Challenge Is Open Tony W
• Git Turns 15 Joe
• Linux Kernel 5.7 RC1 Released Leo

Security Update: 

• Newline Character Can Trick Git Into Giving Up Credentials
  • Credit for finding the vulnerability goes to Felix Wilhelm of Google Project Zero, and credit for fixing it goes to Jeff King of GitHub.

Announcements: 

• Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, May 3, 2020. That’s 8PM British Summer Time. 

Wrap-up:

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

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

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

Download

In our Innards section, we talk all things ‘Lenovo Thinkpads’

And finally, the feedback

Linux Innards:

• Maybe the first thing to say is how many Lenovo laptops we have or have used in the past ** indicates still owned.
• We missed two predictions from Discord!
  • Katya predicts that there will be an official red hat version of fedora IoT
  • Cryptodan predicts that Microsoft will acquire Ubuntu

• Tony H – x61s, x200, x200 Tablet**, x201**, X230i** 
  • None of the ones I still have are in daily use so the x61 has just gone to go to Egypt with a package of other stuff as a donation to a school there.
  • Back when I first started to use Lenovo laptops about 8-9 years ago the thing that I appreciated on the X200 series was the portability (12” screen) battery life and robustness, these laptops were built to be used on the road and were very well built.
  • If it weren’t for aging eyes, I would probably still use my X230i as it is a great little laptop but these days I use my Dell E7440 as a compromise of portability and screen size. The bigger 400 series are just that little too heavy for toting a couple in a laptop bag which I can do with the E7440.
• Tony W –  
  • Had an old IBM thinkpad, 2004 or 2005 machine but do not have anymore and don’t know the model (before my Linux days)
  • Using a Lenovo H50 desktop in the house, budget desktop from 2015
    • Was given to me by my grandfather because he couldn’t stomach Windows 10
    • 4th gen i3 processor
    • Upgraded RAM from 4GB to 8GB
    • Added low profile 2GB nvidia card to it
    • Works fine for most purposes and will play low resource steam games
  • Current work laptop Thinkpad T480
    • Processor i7, 8GB RAM
    • Internal + External Battery
      • • Internal battery is used until depleted, then external is used
        • Can hot swap batteries
        • Seems to be some debate online about lack of option to set external battery to drain first
      • Extremely solid feel
      • Trackpad is great in my experience (though not a lot to compare to)
      • Perfect size
      • Appreciate the built in webcam cover
    • Only very minor CONS 
      • The thing is a finger smudge magnet (don’t really care)
      • HDMI and USB C display out cannot be used simultaneously – one or the other
    • WHY are the Thinkpad docks so expensive?
      • They are nearly $200
      • Many aftermarket hubs are a lot cheaper
        • Aftermarket hub w/ actual working dual displays seem to run about $80
        • My workaround dock situation: USB C hub with one display + one USB C to HDMI adapter.  Cost ~$40
• Popey – 
  • Main machine: ThinkPad T450 – Ubuntu 19.10 (i7, upgraded to 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 250 GB m.2 SSD, replaced screen with matte display.). Docking station, 2 external displays. Multiple external batteries.
  • Previous main machine: ThinkPad X220 (i7, 16GB, swappable hard disks) – mainly used for testing various distros
  • X61s Command line only system – C2D 1.6GHz / 6GB RAM / 250GB SSD
  • T43 – Pentium M 2.0GHz / 1.5GiB RAM / 40GB disk
  • R50e – Celeron 1.4GHz / 1.2GiB RAM / 40GB disk 
  • 380XD – Pentium / 32MiB RAM / 4GB disk / Windows 98
• Joe
  • Thinkpad x120e
    • One of the few early netbooks with a 64 bit processor
    • Not quite fast enough for daily use
    • Works phenomenally as a batocera machine playing old games including ps1’s armored core masters of arena. 
• Leo
  • Thinkpad T450s
    • My daily driver. Bought it second-hand about 2 years ago now. My first and only Thinkpad. I’ve used others before, and quite liked them. Best laptop choice I’ve ever made.
    • i5 5300u, 20GB RAM, 512GB SATA SSD with Mint, 256GB m.2/SATA with Windows. Considering putting something else on it since I haven’t booted into Windows on this laptop for over a month.

Vibrations from the Ether:

• Erik Lietz

I didn’t realize I would be the only listener to submit my 2020 predictions. Thanks for reading them! I accept the challenge to beat the rest of you on your predictions! I will have to figure out some audio equipment if I’m invited onto the show.

Since you asked some questions about my predictions, I will offer some clarifications.

1. 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)

2. 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)

3. 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)

4. Microsoft will offer Office 365 on Linux
   (MS Word, Excel, Power Point at a minimum will be running natively on Linux, no Wine, no web apps)

5. 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)

As Moss said, it very well could have been Martin Wimpress or Alan Poppe who first stated this. I give credit where credit is due, but I can’t find this quote again on my other podcasts to confirm who said it.

By the way – our Linux conversion at the office is now complete! We have all of our workstations (CAD, engineering, and office support staff) running on Mint 19.1 with the 5.0 kernel. We have a server running Ubuntu Server 18.04. Hardly any issues at all, and the issues we do have is with network printing on copiers and accessing files on older Synology NAS boxes. Which, has forced us to do some much needed upgrades on both the copiers and network storage. One main benefit to switching to Linux has been enabling my wife and I as business owners to do all of the IT work ourselves, instead of outsourcing this work. Another benefit is that the setup and maintenance on the Linux machines is easily less than half the amount of time. Time = money! Linux has enabled us to take back control of our computing.

Thanks again for the great podcast!

• G

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to say thanks for the great podcast. I have been listening since 2018. On episode 325, I would like to shout out a big THANK YOU!  to you all for being diplomatic about the recent Purism news and for reminding us of the differences between the Pine Phone and the Librem 5. Bravo! 

• David

I applied the 19.3 latest updates which required a restart and now Mint hangs after I get the new LM boot screen, it never gets past this screen.  I’ve only been using Linux Desktop for about a year, so still learning and this is the first time I’ve had a single issue with Linux.

I do have TimeShift running Daily, Weekly, Monthly but I can’t even get to that point.

Any suggestions on how I can get to ??? So I can do a restore from TimeShift?

Thanks.

Check This Out:

• Leo
  • ZDNet Recommends Linux Mint
• Joe
  • Lenovo’s ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II  NIPPLES EVERYWHERE (there are also nipples on the keyboards)
  • Single Board Computer with GTX 1650! Amazing performance!
  • thinkpad fold

Announcements:

• Ubuntu 19.04 and variants are End of Life on January 23. Please update as soon as possible!
• The next show will be January 26th, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM UTC.

Wrap-up:

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

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

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

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

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

• Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
• Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
• Archive.org for hosting our audio files
• The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)

Download

In our Innards section, we talk all things ‘Lenovo Thinkpads’

And finally, the feedback

Linux Innards:

• Maybe the first thing to say is how many Lenovo laptops we have or have used in the past ** indicates still owned.
• We missed two predictions from Discord!
  • Katya predicts that there will be an official red hat version of fedora IoT
  • Cryptodan predicts that Microsoft will acquire Ubuntu

• Tony H – x61s, x200, x200 Tablet**, x201**, X230i** 
  • None of the ones I still have are in daily use so the x61 has just gone to go to Egypt with a package of other stuff as a donation to a school there.
  • Back when I first started to use Lenovo laptops about 8-9 years ago the thing that I appreciated on the X200 series was the portability (12” screen) battery life and robustness, these laptops were built to be used on the road and were very well built.
  • If it weren’t for aging eyes, I would probably still use my X230i as it is a great little laptop but these days I use my Dell E7440 as a compromise of portability and screen size. The bigger 400 series are just that little too heavy for toting a couple in a laptop bag which I can do with the E7440.
• Tony W –  
  • Had an old IBM thinkpad, 2004 or 2005 machine but do not have anymore and don’t know the model (before my Linux days)
  • Using a Lenovo H50 desktop in the house, budget desktop from 2015
    • Was given to me by my grandfather because he couldn’t stomach Windows 10
    • 4th gen i3 processor
    • Upgraded RAM from 4GB to 8GB
    • Added low profile 2GB nvidia card to it
    • Works fine for most purposes and will play low resource steam games
  • Current work laptop Thinkpad T480
    • Processor i7, 8GB RAM
    • Internal + External Battery
      • • Internal battery is used until depleted, then external is used
        • Can hot swap batteries
        • Seems to be some debate online about lack of option to set external battery to drain first
      • Extremely solid feel
      • Trackpad is great in my experience (though not a lot to compare to)
      • Perfect size
      • Appreciate the built in webcam cover
    • Only very minor CONS 
      • The thing is a finger smudge magnet (don’t really care)
      • HDMI and USB C display out cannot be used simultaneously – one or the other
    • WHY are the Thinkpad docks so expensive?
      • They are nearly $200
      • Many aftermarket hubs are a lot cheaper
        • Aftermarket hub w/ actual working dual displays seem to run about $80
        • My workaround dock situation: USB C hub with one display + one USB C to HDMI adapter.  Cost ~$40
• Popey – 
  • Main machine: ThinkPad T450 – Ubuntu 19.10 (i7, upgraded to 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, 250 GB m.2 SSD, replaced screen with matte display.). Docking station, 2 external displays. Multiple external batteries.
  • Previous main machine: ThinkPad X220 (i7, 16GB, swappable hard disks) – mainly used for testing various distros
  • X61s Command line only system – C2D 1.6GHz / 6GB RAM / 250GB SSD
  • T43 – Pentium M 2.0GHz / 1.5GiB RAM / 40GB disk
  • R50e – Celeron 1.4GHz / 1.2GiB RAM / 40GB disk 
  • 380XD – Pentium / 32MiB RAM / 4GB disk / Windows 98
• Joe
  • Thinkpad x120e
    • One of the few early netbooks with a 64 bit processor
    • Not quite fast enough for daily use
    • Works phenomenally as a batocera machine playing old games including ps1’s armored core masters of arena. 
• Leo
  • Thinkpad T450s
    • My daily driver. Bought it second-hand about 2 years ago now. My first and only Thinkpad. I’ve used others before, and quite liked them. Best laptop choice I’ve ever made.
    • i5 5300u, 20GB RAM, 512GB SATA SSD with Mint, 256GB m.2/SATA with Windows. Considering putting something else on it since I haven’t booted into Windows on this laptop for over a month.

Vibrations from the Ether:

• Erik Lietz

I didn’t realize I would be the only listener to submit my 2020 predictions. Thanks for reading them! I accept the challenge to beat the rest of you on your predictions! I will have to figure out some audio equipment if I’m invited onto the show.

Since you asked some questions about my predictions, I will offer some clarifications.

1. 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)

2. 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)

3. 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)

4. Microsoft will offer Office 365 on Linux
   (MS Word, Excel, Power Point at a minimum will be running natively on Linux, no Wine, no web apps)

5. 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)

As Moss said, it very well could have been Martin Wimpress or Alan Poppe who first stated this. I give credit where credit is due, but I can’t find this quote again on my other podcasts to confirm who said it.

By the way – our Linux conversion at the office is now complete! We have all of our workstations (CAD, engineering, and office support staff) running on Mint 19.1 with the 5.0 kernel. We have a server running Ubuntu Server 18.04. Hardly any issues at all, and the issues we do have is with network printing on copiers and accessing files on older Synology NAS boxes. Which, has forced us to do some much needed upgrades on both the copiers and network storage. One main benefit to switching to Linux has been enabling my wife and I as business owners to do all of the IT work ourselves, instead of outsourcing this work. Another benefit is that the setup and maintenance on the Linux machines is easily less than half the amount of time. Time = money! Linux has enabled us to take back control of our computing.

Thanks again for the great podcast!

• G

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to say thanks for the great podcast. I have been listening since 2018. On episode 325, I would like to shout out a big THANK YOU!  to you all for being diplomatic about the recent Purism news and for reminding us of the differences between the Pine Phone and the Librem 5. Bravo! 

• David

I applied the 19.3 latest updates which required a restart and now Mint hangs after I get the new LM boot screen, it never gets past this screen.  I’ve only been using Linux Desktop for about a year, so still learning and this is the first time I’ve had a single issue with Linux.

I do have TimeShift running Daily, Weekly, Monthly but I can’t even get to that point.

Any suggestions on how I can get to ??? So I can do a restore from TimeShift?

Thanks.

Check This Out:

• Leo
  • ZDNet Recommends Linux Mint
• Joe
  • Lenovo’s ThinkPad TrackPoint Keyboard II  NIPPLES EVERYWHERE (there are also nipples on the keyboards)
  • Single Board Computer with GTX 1650! Amazing performance!
  • thinkpad fold

Announcements:

• Ubuntu 19.04 and variants are End of Life on January 23. Please update as soon as possible!
• The next show will be January 26th, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM UTC.

Wrap-up:

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

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

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

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

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

• Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
• Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
• Archive.org for hosting our audio files
• The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)