Security Update – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Wed, 22 Sep 2021 05:48:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Security Update – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 mintCast false episodic CC-BY-SA 4.0 CC-BY-SA 4.0 podcast Security Update – mintCast https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/big-logo-1600.png https://mintcast.org TV-G 164426984 370 – New Wanderers https://mintcast.org/370-new-wanderers/ Wed, 22 Sep 2021 05:40:56 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5214 In security, no encrypted chats are safe
Then in our Wanderings, we hear from the old AND new crew
Download
]]> 1:35 The News
30:19 Security Update
38:58 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
50:36 Announcements & Outro

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

In security, no encrypted chats are safe

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

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio production, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 370 - New Wanderers full 1:26:23 5214 366 – Prox Your Mox https://mintcast.org/mintcast-366-prox-your-mox/ Wed, 28 Jul 2021 05:30:42 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5152 In security, updates on Kaseya, PrintNightmare and a new systemd vulnerability
Then in our Wanderings, Joe actually wanders, Josh proxes his mox, and I’m going full btrfs.
Download
]]> 2:17 The News
33:06 Security Update
39:52 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:12:51 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news DuckDuckGo protects us even more, then, It’s always DNS, the SteamDeck looks awesome, the Kernel is 30, and more

In security, updates on Kaseya, PrintNightmare and a new systemd vulnerability

Then in our Wanderings, Joe actually wanders, Josh proxes his mox, and I’m going full btrfs

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 366 - Prox Your Mox full 1:16:58 5152 mintCast 362 – The Takeover https://mintcast.org/mintcast-362-the-takeover/ Wed, 02 Jun 2021 06:54:23 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5082 Then in our news, Freenode taken over by Andrew Lee and Ubuntu and Fedora abandon ship, Material Shell for Gnome 40, Fedora 32 is end of life, and more
Download
]]> Download

3:02 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:06:36 The News
1:34:45 Security Update
1:44:36 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been system building, Joe has been playing with his new 3D printer, Bo has range anxiety and Tony has been learning about creating YouTube videos

Then in our news, Freenode taken over by Andrew Lee and Ubuntu and Fedora abandon ship, Material Shell for Gnome 40, Fedora 32 is end of life, and more

In security, a Linux rootkit that shows its face…fish.

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated 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 5082 mintCast 357 – Surfboard Building Lunch (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-357-surfboard-building-lunch-mp3/ Wed, 24 Mar 2021 04:50:28 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=4983 Then, in the News, new LibreOffice and Audacity, 7zip is native, Calamares can use more butter, and a new kernel is coming
In Security, how easy it is to buy up your information
Download
]]> Download

2:19 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
53:33 The News
1:14:50 Security Update
1:27:13 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I do a little scripting, Joe drops a laptop, Moss is feeling phone-y, Tony walks a thousand miles, Josh visits Piggly Wiggly, Bo battles trolls, Mike gets a new-to-you Q2u

Then, in the News, new LibreOffice and Audacity, 7zip is native, Calamares can use more butter, and a new kernel is coming

In Security, how easy it is to buy up your information

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • I wrote that backup script I promised. It will backup all contents of your home folder, including dot files, into a gz, xz, bz2 or 7z archive.
    • It’s in my personal, local gitea, but I can post it to my public github if there’s interest.
  • Joe
    • One of the 1more headsets the cable has gone bad which is why I have had so many problems with it.  Basically the cable just deteriorated away.  So I took the driver end apart and pulled the cable all the way through and put in another one.  The first one that I tried to replace it with was too thick so I removed some cable from another headset that I had no use for, that was for a side with a mic and used two wires for each connection.  It came out well and I may do it to another of the 1mores where I have had to do a lot of repairs because the wire was falling apart
    • On that 5285 tablet I was not able to get anything working on it despite trying to figure out what needed to be replaced.  I know it is one of the surface mount components but I don’t have the proper tools to remove and replace and while I do know the area I need to start in I don’t have the replacement parts.
      1. So instead I have ordered a replacement motherboard.  It is the i3 version instead of the i5 version but it was 60 dollars and it will still be an improvement over a couple of the other systems that I use
      2. I will eventually get to order another one with the specs I want.  Or maybe a 5290.  My analysis of price to performance leads me to believe that it is the current winner for value when it comes to cpu performance.  The 7000 series does not provide much of a difference in performance for a large price bump and the 5290 has double the performance of the 5285 for a marginal price difference
      3. Also ordered a 2230 ssd for 15 dollars that should add a lot of high performance hard drive space to the tablet for a similar price to the much slower micro sd. I may also throw in whatever micro sd I have sitting around but we shall see, well I will when I get another one anyway
      4. Did get the new motherboard and put it in easy enough but it turns out the creen is bad.  So I have repurposed it along with a usb c adapter to work as a set top box for my living room tv.  The problem is that used screens cost nearly as much as new ones which is in the 150 dollar range
      5. I am thinking about writing a buyer’s guide for Windows tablets that seem to have a good record of running Linux or could be made to work with a little work.  My problem with it is it would not be good for more than a year or two other than the general guidelines because of how technology changes. I would like to know if people would want to read it before I write it though. I suppose that I could write a new guide every year or two.
    • I got wrapped up in the headphone cord that was attached to my laptop.  The laptop ended up on the floor but thankfully I have not been able to find any damage for that.  The cable for my 99 neos however was damaged.  A new cable costs 20 dollars so I am fixing the old one.  I may still buy a new one but I do want to replace the 3.5mm jack anyway.  Cant have too many cables.  It is a 4 pole connector and I have not had much luck getting those to work correctly. But I was able to get some practice recently when I was able to pick up 2 razer kraken pro v2s and an xbox headset for free from FB marketplace.  The last person had tried to do a jack replacement and gotten the cabling wrong.  So far I have been able to get one of the Razers working like new by fixing the work that was already done.
    • I ended up replacing the battery in my bluetooth/wired mechanical keyboard.  The battery that was in it was not holding a charge for very long and that would make the connection very wonky after only a short period of time.  I am hoping that the issue was an aging battery but I did also replace the 750 mAh with 4000 mAh battery. It should not be a problem moving to a larger capacity battery on the lower power charger, it will just take a lot longer to charge.  But slow charging is supposed to be better for batteries anyway.
  • Moss
    • I spent an hour here and an hour there getting the Zia800 up and running. I met with complete success on the 13th, dual-booting Linux Mint 20.1 MATE and Windows 10 Pro. I still need to install and configure Kodi for her, and she still has some configuring to do. She continues to use her T430 exclusively; I have not seen her turn the Zia800 on to this point. She blushes and goes silent when I ask her why not.
    • I have a problem. I have one swap partition on my Kudu, and every time I install a distro, that distro finds it and renames it, so other distros can’t find it anymore. This makes for a really slow boot. With help from Londoner, I tried to delete Mint’s use of the swap partition and install a swapfile. The attempt failed, and I had to do a complete reinstall. Even so, I learned enough to get it right this time. So now I have one fewer distro looking for the swap partition. Seven to go.
    • Here is the info I was using from Londoner:
      • To configure swapfile (as root or using sudo). 2G creates 2 GiB swapfile.
      • sudo swapoff /swapfile
      • sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
      • sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
      • sudo mkswap /swapfile
      • sudo nano /etc/fstab
    • Delete existing entry for swap partition and replace with
      • /swapfile none swap sw 0 0
      • Save & reboot
    • I got a new phone yesterday, a Google Pixel 3a XL. I charged it up and was going to root it and put Lineage OS on it before using it… but… As soon as I turned it on, it started installing Android 11, which I’ve never gotten close to. I caved. I have moved all my files over, which required the use of my Wavlink toaster as the Pixel does not accommodate SD cards. I will, however, go ahead and put Lineage on my old Moto X4, and will make that available as a business phone for AWH…which still hasn’t taken off but we’re being promised a lot of things.
    • I’ve been keeping neofetch data on every installation I do one every machine I own, and updating it as needed. The file is available on our Telegram and Discord groups. The result shows how much memory is used by the system with nothing running, except Terminal and neofetch, and makes a good baseline for deciding which distro to use according to your system’s amount of memory.
    • We’re getting ready for another exciting episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest, scheduled for March 31st. For the first time since Episode 001, our current episode 020 is our most-viewed episode at 781, with Episode 019 next at 745 and Episode 018 in 3rd at 727! 
    • I have managed to successfully install three distros this month, and instead of reviewing more than one, our Telegram group voted on it and picked Mageia 8, which I had hinted earlier I *might* be reviewing. This means I know what I’m reviewing for April as well, also based on the votes and comments.
    • It’s time to get your votes in on Distro Madness, Round 3; voting will close this Friday before moving on to Round 4. There were some interesting upsets in Round 2. We’re getting a lot of participation in this fun little diversion. We would like to encourage you to become a member of the site; we have some plans in the works for making additional features for members only, and membership is free.
    • Dresden fights on. [Chapter 32 of Small Favors] And we have just been gifted a complete collection of The Expanse novels and shorts, as well as the rest of the Codex Alera collection.
  • Tony Hughes
    • Lots of walking, Monday 8th and Tuesday 9th March, myself and my wife went on 2 long walks. On Monday 8th, we walked 8 Miles and Tuesday 9th, nearly 12 miles. Myself and my Wife also started a virtual walking challenge last Wednesday, “Mizen to Malin Virtual Challenge” which is 360 miles from the North Coast of Ireland to the South coast. My Wife has just completed the Lands End to John O Groats challenge which was 874 miles and now has a T shirt and shiny medal to prove it.   
    • Not talked about it for a while but I have been doing some Diecast restoration work, preparing castings for repaint, it has been quite cold here so painting in my outside workshop was out so I have been busy getting the castings dismantled, paint striped and the posts drilled and tapped out ready for reassembly. I managed to get some prepared castings painted and reassembled this last week as the weather has warmed up enough to make painting possible. 
    • I nearly missed the show this week as I hadn’t been given the heads up about the clocks going forward in the US, ours don’t go forward till next week, so my time is an hour earlier than my usual 8pm. (to echo another podcast) I blame Leo lol. 
  • Josh
    • CKP ep 3 coming to a podcatcher near you soon!
    • Linux Mint is still the champion of Linux gaming!
    • Did some distrohopping going from Mint to openSUSE Tumbleweed to Endeavor back to Mint all in one 3 day period.
    • dd + pigz is going to be my method of backup from now on even though it’s slower.
    • Btrfs send/receive is awesome but I need to learn more about it…
    • Got a new audio interface, the Presonus Audiobox usb96. Also getting a new mic, the Audio Technica AT2020!
  • Bo
    • The 3d printed dice tray heard round the world
    • Valheim server
    • CKP progress
  • Mike
    • I THOUGHT I finally fixed WiFi. New microphone (Samsung Q2u), new headphones (Sony WH1000XM3), work on recording room.
    • Removed my information (People Finder, White Pages, MyLife) [Moss-HOW?]
    • New hardware wallet (Ledger Nano S)

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on April 4th, 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 4983 mintCast 357 – Surfboard Building Lunch https://mintcast.org/mintcast-357-surfboard-building-lunch/ Wed, 24 Mar 2021 04:39:13 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=4979 Then, in the News, new LibreOffice and Audacity, 7zip is native, Calamares can use more butter, and a new kernel is coming
In Security, how easy it is to buy up your information
Download
]]> Download

2:19 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
53:33 The News
1:14:50 Security Update
1:27:13 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I do a little scripting, Joe drops a laptop, Moss is feeling phone-y, Tony walks a thousand miles, Josh visits Piggly Wiggly, Bo battles trolls, Mike gets a new-to-you Q2u

Then, in the News, new LibreOffice and Audacity, 7zip is native, Calamares can use more butter, and a new kernel is coming

In Security, how easy it is to buy up your information

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • I wrote that backup script I promised. It will backup all contents of your home folder, including dot files, into a gz, xz, bz2 or 7z archive.
    • It’s in my personal, local gitea, but I can post it to my public github if there’s interest.
  • Joe
    • One of the 1more headsets the cable has gone bad which is why I have had so many problems with it.  Basically the cable just deteriorated away.  So I took the driver end apart and pulled the cable all the way through and put in another one.  The first one that I tried to replace it with was too thick so I removed some cable from another headset that I had no use for, that was for a side with a mic and used two wires for each connection.  It came out well and I may do it to another of the 1mores where I have had to do a lot of repairs because the wire was falling apart
    • On that 5285 tablet I was not able to get anything working on it despite trying to figure out what needed to be replaced.  I know it is one of the surface mount components but I don’t have the proper tools to remove and replace and while I do know the area I need to start in I don’t have the replacement parts.
      1. So instead I have ordered a replacement motherboard.  It is the i3 version instead of the i5 version but it was 60 dollars and it will still be an improvement over a couple of the other systems that I use
      2. I will eventually get to order another one with the specs I want.  Or maybe a 5290.  My analysis of price to performance leads me to believe that it is the current winner for value when it comes to cpu performance.  The 7000 series does not provide much of a difference in performance for a large price bump and the 5290 has double the performance of the 5285 for a marginal price difference
      3. Also ordered a 2230 ssd for 15 dollars that should add a lot of high performance hard drive space to the tablet for a similar price to the much slower micro sd. I may also throw in whatever micro sd I have sitting around but we shall see, well I will when I get another one anyway
      4. Did get the new motherboard and put it in easy enough but it turns out the creen is bad.  So I have repurposed it along with a usb c adapter to work as a set top box for my living room tv.  The problem is that used screens cost nearly as much as new ones which is in the 150 dollar range
      5. I am thinking about writing a buyer’s guide for Windows tablets that seem to have a good record of running Linux or could be made to work with a little work.  My problem with it is it would not be good for more than a year or two other than the general guidelines because of how technology changes. I would like to know if people would want to read it before I write it though. I suppose that I could write a new guide every year or two.
    • I got wrapped up in the headphone cord that was attached to my laptop.  The laptop ended up on the floor but thankfully I have not been able to find any damage for that.  The cable for my 99 neos however was damaged.  A new cable costs 20 dollars so I am fixing the old one.  I may still buy a new one but I do want to replace the 3.5mm jack anyway.  Cant have too many cables.  It is a 4 pole connector and I have not had much luck getting those to work correctly. But I was able to get some practice recently when I was able to pick up 2 razer kraken pro v2s and an xbox headset for free from FB marketplace.  The last person had tried to do a jack replacement and gotten the cabling wrong.  So far I have been able to get one of the Razers working like new by fixing the work that was already done.
    • I ended up replacing the battery in my bluetooth/wired mechanical keyboard.  The battery that was in it was not holding a charge for very long and that would make the connection very wonky after only a short period of time.  I am hoping that the issue was an aging battery but I did also replace the 750 mAh with 4000 mAh battery. It should not be a problem moving to a larger capacity battery on the lower power charger, it will just take a lot longer to charge.  But slow charging is supposed to be better for batteries anyway.
  • Moss
    • I spent an hour here and an hour there getting the Zia800 up and running. I met with complete success on the 13th, dual-booting Linux Mint 20.1 MATE and Windows 10 Pro. I still need to install and configure Kodi for her, and she still has some configuring to do. She continues to use her T430 exclusively; I have not seen her turn the Zia800 on to this point. She blushes and goes silent when I ask her why not.
    • I have a problem. I have one swap partition on my Kudu, and every time I install a distro, that distro finds it and renames it, so other distros can’t find it anymore. This makes for a really slow boot. With help from Londoner, I tried to delete Mint’s use of the swap partition and install a swapfile. The attempt failed, and I had to do a complete reinstall. Even so, I learned enough to get it right this time. So now I have one fewer distro looking for the swap partition. Seven to go.
    • Here is the info I was using from Londoner:
      • To configure swapfile (as root or using sudo). 2G creates 2 GiB swapfile.
      • sudo swapoff /swapfile
      • sudo fallocate -l 2G /swapfile
      • sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
      • sudo mkswap /swapfile
      • sudo nano /etc/fstab
    • Delete existing entry for swap partition and replace with
      • /swapfile none swap sw 0 0
      • Save & reboot
    • I got a new phone yesterday, a Google Pixel 3a XL. I charged it up and was going to root it and put Lineage OS on it before using it… but… As soon as I turned it on, it started installing Android 11, which I’ve never gotten close to. I caved. I have moved all my files over, which required the use of my Wavlink toaster as the Pixel does not accommodate SD cards. I will, however, go ahead and put Lineage on my old Moto X4, and will make that available as a business phone for AWH…which still hasn’t taken off but we’re being promised a lot of things.
    • I’ve been keeping neofetch data on every installation I do one every machine I own, and updating it as needed. The file is available on our Telegram and Discord groups. The result shows how much memory is used by the system with nothing running, except Terminal and neofetch, and makes a good baseline for deciding which distro to use according to your system’s amount of memory.
    • We’re getting ready for another exciting episode of Distrohoppers’ Digest, scheduled for March 31st. For the first time since Episode 001, our current episode 020 is our most-viewed episode at 781, with Episode 019 next at 745 and Episode 018 in 3rd at 727! 
    • I have managed to successfully install three distros this month, and instead of reviewing more than one, our Telegram group voted on it and picked Mageia 8, which I had hinted earlier I *might* be reviewing. This means I know what I’m reviewing for April as well, also based on the votes and comments.
    • It’s time to get your votes in on Distro Madness, Round 3; voting will close this Friday before moving on to Round 4. There were some interesting upsets in Round 2. We’re getting a lot of participation in this fun little diversion. We would like to encourage you to become a member of the site; we have some plans in the works for making additional features for members only, and membership is free.
    • Dresden fights on. [Chapter 32 of Small Favors] And we have just been gifted a complete collection of The Expanse novels and shorts, as well as the rest of the Codex Alera collection.
  • Tony Hughes
    • Lots of walking, Monday 8th and Tuesday 9th March, myself and my wife went on 2 long walks. On Monday 8th, we walked 8 Miles and Tuesday 9th, nearly 12 miles. Myself and my Wife also started a virtual walking challenge last Wednesday, “Mizen to Malin Virtual Challenge” which is 360 miles from the North Coast of Ireland to the South coast. My Wife has just completed the Lands End to John O Groats challenge which was 874 miles and now has a T shirt and shiny medal to prove it.   
    • Not talked about it for a while but I have been doing some Diecast restoration work, preparing castings for repaint, it has been quite cold here so painting in my outside workshop was out so I have been busy getting the castings dismantled, paint striped and the posts drilled and tapped out ready for reassembly. I managed to get some prepared castings painted and reassembled this last week as the weather has warmed up enough to make painting possible. 
    • I nearly missed the show this week as I hadn’t been given the heads up about the clocks going forward in the US, ours don’t go forward till next week, so my time is an hour earlier than my usual 8pm. (to echo another podcast) I blame Leo lol. 
  • Josh
    • CKP ep 3 coming to a podcatcher near you soon!
    • Linux Mint is still the champion of Linux gaming!
    • Did some distrohopping going from Mint to openSUSE Tumbleweed to Endeavor back to Mint all in one 3 day period.
    • dd + pigz is going to be my method of backup from now on even though it’s slower.
    • Btrfs send/receive is awesome but I need to learn more about it…
    • Got a new audio interface, the Presonus Audiobox usb96. Also getting a new mic, the Audio Technica AT2020!
  • Bo
    • The 3d printed dice tray heard round the world
    • Valheim server
    • CKP progress
  • Mike
    • I THOUGHT I finally fixed WiFi. New microphone (Samsung Q2u), new headphones (Sony WH1000XM3), work on recording room.
    • Removed my information (People Finder, White Pages, MyLife) [Moss-HOW?]
    • New hardware wallet (Ledger Nano S)

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on April 4th, 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 4979 mintCast 348 – 400 Raspberry Pies (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-348-400-raspberry-pies-mp3/ Wed, 18 Nov 2020 04:39:51 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4771 Then, in our news, the Raspberry Pi launches a whole new dessert, GIMP is almost ready for GTK3, 
In security, Ubuntu’s GDM3 has a root bug
Download
]]> Download

1:56 Wanderings
33:22 News
50:26 Security
56:54 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo colorizes his terminal, Josh eyeballs an eggroll, Tony gives the Gorilla another go, and Joe fiddles with firmware

Then, in our news, the Raspberry Pi launches a whole new dessert, GIMP is almost ready for GTK3, 

In security, Ubuntu’s GDM3 has a root bug

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Put out a video on my channel that was way overdue.
    • A/B testing Nextcloud on my raspberry Pi 4 with an external 1TB USB drive vs. a much more powerful laptop (i7-2630qm, 8GB RAM) running the same thing with 1TB internal USB.
    • Doing some surveillance!
    • Changing terminal colors. Fell in love with the Monokai [Dark] Soda theme. I’m testing out the Dracula theme too. They’re duking it out right now for supremacy. I blame bpytop for having such cool themes.
  • Josh
    •  I have been messing around with Linux gaming some more. Been testing it against Windows and the results are not good for the most part. I am not a Linux guru so maybe I am doing it all wrong but I am trying. I have not gotten to try the Glorious Egg Roll Proton yet but that’s my next step to see what happens. My Nvidia 1650 Super is actually not even running at it’s max speeds under linux or windows because my Ryzen 2600 is just not up to the task for certain games. Overclocking my cpu does help some stuttering issues but not a whole lot. The main game I am playing right now is Kingdom Come Deliverance and under Linux with low to medium graphics settings I get roughly between 50 and 60 fps in towns. You have to test in towns on that game because when out of towns it runs smooth no matter what settings you have. Unfortunately on Windows though I get between 70 and 80 fps with medium to high settings which is a lot more taxing but it’s still getting that much better on windows. I am chalking it down to the translation layer taking some of the CPU power cause that game is really CPU bound. 
  • Tony H
    • Recorded Episode 17 of DHD which is now available on your podcatchers, we have had nearly 300 downloads in a week. I Installed Ubuntu Studio 20.10 on the test machine with mixed results as again I could not get a Dual boot to install. On further investigation I may not have left a big enough partition for the original OS so I will have to have another go.  I did however do a successful inline upgrade to the 20.04 install on one of the drives in my tower, which now has the shiny Plasma DE instead of XFCE.  I suggest you only try this on a test PC or in a VM as unless like the Ubuntu Studio release you need any major changes made.  If you plan on upgrading a production PC in this manner, make sure to back up “ALL” your data, as there is a risk of data loss, and we all know it will happen when you have forgotten to back up.  I have also been playing with the new Beta of GIMP which will eventually be released sometime in 2021 as GIMP 3.0, I’ll talk more about that in the news. 
    • Other than that we successfully navigated our 4 days of shielding and my wife had her hospital procedure without any issues, although it will be another week or so before we get the results of the biopsies they have to test. 
  • Joe
    •   Talked last time about ordering a bunch of PSP’s 
      • Got 7 out of 8 of them working, 4 1001s and 3 3001s although one of them has a bad connector for the UMD drive so I will be doing a battery mod on that one to give a much greater battery life.
      • One of them had a bad motherboard and screen and was only good for the other parts
      •   of the 1001s I had spent a lot of time taking it apart and putting it back together because so many of the parts were messed up, the power board, the UMD drive the faceplate and I think it is slightly warped.  But it all is working except for the UMD drive
      • Also have put custom firmware on all of them in order to be able to play retro emulation and to play games without the UMDs which will save space and battery life
      • I have sold one of them as of last night and made back most of my money that I have invested and may hopefully sell another one later today.
    • My transmission docker setup quit working and I had to figure out why.  I went through a lot of iterations of testing thinking that I had messed something up.  Even tried using a different version of the transmission VPN which I use along with docker chrome to change my ip.  I was able to get a different version of transmission working but it was not showing a new ip address.
      • Did my research and it turns out that PIA my vpn provider had turned off a bunch of older servers.  
      • After finding that out it was just a matter of changing all the docker configs on all my machines that use transmission/chrome(which is all of them) and things were working again
      • I also checked the speeds that I was getting on the new servers and it is super fast I know previously I was limited to 30mbps and this was up around 160mbps
    •  Last Saturday I also did several items on my honey due list including rewiring a wall lamp into a hanging lamp with a switch.  Pretending to be an electrician again but I think I did a good job.  Anything to pull out the soldering iron
    •  I also serviced 2 bicycles for my kids to get them back on the road and I have taken the opportunity to go for a couple of rides with them which is fun.  I may need to get a bike of my own.  Because I obviously need another hobby to eat up my time
    • With the end of year stability at work I have been able to binge watch Big Bang Theory.  Man that show ran for a long time
    • Also have been playing the new DLC for Borderlands 3.  I am liking the new skill trees and have not tried the new mode yet.
    • Got a new kitten.  The wife finally convinced me

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • Bug in Ubuntu’s GDM3 allows root access
    • Link .pam_environment to /dev/zero
    • Open Region & Language. It’ll freeze and peg the accounts-daemon process at 100%
    • Send the stop signal (-SIGSTOP)
    • Run (nohup bash -c “sleep 30s; kill -SIGSEGV 597; kill -SIGCONT 597”) where 597 is the process ID of accounts-daemon
    • Logout and wait for the new user creation window
    • Proof of Concept
  • Ransomware for Linux
    • RansomEXX

Announcements:

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

https://everytimezone.com/s/170bc4e1

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Londoner for our time zone link
  • Owen Peery for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 4771 mintCast 348 – 400 Raspberry Pies https://mintcast.org/mintcast-348-400-raspberry-pies/ Wed, 18 Nov 2020 04:19:50 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4765 Then, in our news, the Raspberry Pi launches a whole new dessert, GIMP is almost ready for GTK3, 
In security, Ubuntu’s GDM3 has a root bug
Download
]]> Download

1:56 Wanderings
33:22 News
50:26 Security
56:54 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo colorizes his terminal, Josh eyeballs an eggroll, Tony gives the Gorilla another go, and Joe fiddles with firmware

Then, in our news, the Raspberry Pi launches a whole new dessert, GIMP is almost ready for GTK3, 

In security, Ubuntu’s GDM3 has a root bug

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Put out a video on my channel that was way overdue.
    • A/B testing Nextcloud on my raspberry Pi 4 with an external 1TB USB drive vs. a much more powerful laptop (i7-2630qm, 8GB RAM) running the same thing with 1TB internal USB.
    • Doing some surveillance!
    • Changing terminal colors. Fell in love with the Monokai [Dark] Soda theme. I’m testing out the Dracula theme too. They’re duking it out right now for supremacy. I blame bpytop for having such cool themes.
  • Josh
    •  I have been messing around with Linux gaming some more. Been testing it against Windows and the results are not good for the most part. I am not a Linux guru so maybe I am doing it all wrong but I am trying. I have not gotten to try the Glorious Egg Roll Proton yet but that’s my next step to see what happens. My Nvidia 1650 Super is actually not even running at it’s max speeds under linux or windows because my Ryzen 2600 is just not up to the task for certain games. Overclocking my cpu does help some stuttering issues but not a whole lot. The main game I am playing right now is Kingdom Come Deliverance and under Linux with low to medium graphics settings I get roughly between 50 and 60 fps in towns. You have to test in towns on that game because when out of towns it runs smooth no matter what settings you have. Unfortunately on Windows though I get between 70 and 80 fps with medium to high settings which is a lot more taxing but it’s still getting that much better on windows. I am chalking it down to the translation layer taking some of the CPU power cause that game is really CPU bound. 
  • Tony H
    • Recorded Episode 17 of DHD which is now available on your podcatchers, we have had nearly 300 downloads in a week. I Installed Ubuntu Studio 20.10 on the test machine with mixed results as again I could not get a Dual boot to install. On further investigation I may not have left a big enough partition for the original OS so I will have to have another go.  I did however do a successful inline upgrade to the 20.04 install on one of the drives in my tower, which now has the shiny Plasma DE instead of XFCE.  I suggest you only try this on a test PC or in a VM as unless like the Ubuntu Studio release you need any major changes made.  If you plan on upgrading a production PC in this manner, make sure to back up “ALL” your data, as there is a risk of data loss, and we all know it will happen when you have forgotten to back up.  I have also been playing with the new Beta of GIMP which will eventually be released sometime in 2021 as GIMP 3.0, I’ll talk more about that in the news. 
    • Other than that we successfully navigated our 4 days of shielding and my wife had her hospital procedure without any issues, although it will be another week or so before we get the results of the biopsies they have to test. 
  • Joe
    •   Talked last time about ordering a bunch of PSP’s 
      • Got 7 out of 8 of them working, 4 1001s and 3 3001s although one of them has a bad connector for the UMD drive so I will be doing a battery mod on that one to give a much greater battery life.
      • One of them had a bad motherboard and screen and was only good for the other parts
      •   of the 1001s I had spent a lot of time taking it apart and putting it back together because so many of the parts were messed up, the power board, the UMD drive the faceplate and I think it is slightly warped.  But it all is working except for the UMD drive
      • Also have put custom firmware on all of them in order to be able to play retro emulation and to play games without the UMDs which will save space and battery life
      • I have sold one of them as of last night and made back most of my money that I have invested and may hopefully sell another one later today.
    • My transmission docker setup quit working and I had to figure out why.  I went through a lot of iterations of testing thinking that I had messed something up.  Even tried using a different version of the transmission VPN which I use along with docker chrome to change my ip.  I was able to get a different version of transmission working but it was not showing a new ip address.
      • Did my research and it turns out that PIA my vpn provider had turned off a bunch of older servers.  
      • After finding that out it was just a matter of changing all the docker configs on all my machines that use transmission/chrome(which is all of them) and things were working again
      • I also checked the speeds that I was getting on the new servers and it is super fast I know previously I was limited to 30mbps and this was up around 160mbps
    •  Last Saturday I also did several items on my honey due list including rewiring a wall lamp into a hanging lamp with a switch.  Pretending to be an electrician again but I think I did a good job.  Anything to pull out the soldering iron
    •  I also serviced 2 bicycles for my kids to get them back on the road and I have taken the opportunity to go for a couple of rides with them which is fun.  I may need to get a bike of my own.  Because I obviously need another hobby to eat up my time
    • With the end of year stability at work I have been able to binge watch Big Bang Theory.  Man that show ran for a long time
    • Also have been playing the new DLC for Borderlands 3.  I am liking the new skill trees and have not tried the new mode yet.
    • Got a new kitten.  The wife finally convinced me

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • Bug in Ubuntu’s GDM3 allows root access
    • Link .pam_environment to /dev/zero
    • Open Region & Language. It’ll freeze and peg the accounts-daemon process at 100%
    • Send the stop signal (-SIGSTOP)
    • Run (nohup bash -c “sleep 30s; kill -SIGSEGV 597; kill -SIGCONT 597”) where 597 is the process ID of accounts-daemon
    • Logout and wait for the new user creation window
    • Proof of Concept
  • Ransomware for Linux
    • RansomEXX

Announcements:

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

https://everytimezone.com/s/170bc4e1

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Londoner for our time zone link
  • Owen Peery for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> full 57:03 4765 mintCast 332 – Thunar Storm https://mintcast.org/mintcast-332-thunar-storm/ Wed, 08 Apr 2020 05:24:22 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4333 Then, in the news, Linux Mint Monthly news comes out, F-Droid gets some money,and Thunar and Java get updates.
In security, Zoom doom.
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

In security, Zoom doom.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

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

Security Update: 

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

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

Download

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

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

In security, Zoom doom.

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

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

Security Update: 

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

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