Ubuntu Budgie – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Wed, 11 Nov 2020 05:12:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Ubuntu Budgie – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 164426984 mintCast 347.5 – Sensational Silverback (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-347-5-sensational-silverback-mp3/ Wed, 11 Nov 2020 05:07:21 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4758 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:39 Linux Innards
49:14 Vibrations from the Ether
53:30 Check This Out
56:34 Outro

In our Innards section, we cover our experiences with the flavors of Ubuntu 20.10!

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

  • Ubuntu 20.10 Tinkering
    • Ubuntu Proper
      • Pi Joe
        • Super easy to install.  Used the rpi-imager instead of etcher.  Very quick install 
        • It took a couple of tries to get the screen image to show up on the monitor that i was using but after that it was very much like a standard install of Ubuntu
        • Post initial setup i tried some of my standard application installs.  
          • X2go worked easy
          • Chrome browser did not because it is arm and the old method for getting chromium to work with netflix did not work either
          • Also installed audacity and mumble which seemed to work easy enough
          • I was able to install a docker version of chromium that did work with netflix and video played very smooth after a couple of minutes of dropped frames
        • I have to say that it is not the smoothest os i have seen on the pi but i am able to multitask on it.
        • I am familiar with gnome from the time that i was using fedora and it does work
        • Very standard linux but at least on the pi version it has this issue where it locks the screen at x time even when video is playing so i had to set it to not lock on its own
        • There were some obscure programs that i could not install because there was no arm version also
        • I wouldn’t want to use the pi long term as a desktop but it works well enough as a secondary or backup machine for me.  I was able to do daily tasks and browsing with it and video watching was smooth
        • Gnome did not seem to be a too much of a resource hog which had been a problem in the past.
    • Kubuntu
      • Leo – Just wow. Every time I jump on a Plasma desktop, I fall in love all over again. The more I do this, the more chances there are for it to stick!
      • The biggest downside to Kubuntu is Plasma quickly released a huge update in 5.20 after Kubuntu’s freeze. So Kubuntu folks will have to wait for 21.04 for those fixes and additions or jump on KDE Neon and slap on the HWE kernel and fixes there.
    • Ubuntu Unity 
      • Bo – I’ve been running it all week and…. I kinda like it.
        • The “window dodge” feature is missing
      • Moss – I’ve been running 20.04 all along, so I installed this. It would not install the Nvidia driver — the same driver which installed perfectly in 18.04 and 20.04. I think we’ve identified this as a kernel 5.8 issue, and I’ll talk a bit more about this in the next section.
    • Ubuntu Studio
      • Tony W – 
        • Implementation of ubiquity installer looks slick 
        • Menus look WAY more modern
          • Big change – descriptions added to each application without the need to hover mouse cursor
      • Moss – 
        • I downloaded it and tried it, but I could not get the panel to the bottom. Some things you just don’t have to live with. I’ll just add the tools to another flavor or even Mint.
      • Tony H –
        • I installed it on my Lenovo X230i last night, and it would not connect to my network WiFi, but would tether to the phone. I found out later that any other room in the house is fine but it can not connect to my WiFi network from the studio, so probably a hardware issue as no issue with my other machines. 
        • As for the OS it looks slick and seems very friendly with RAM use at 620Mb at boot and 1.5Gb with FireFox and 3 tabs open. The install and a couple of additional programs not included by default take 13.1Gb of HDD space so it needs at least 16Gb+ in a VM. So I would suggest a 32Gb USB Flash Drive if doing a persistent install to one.  
        • There are a few little annoyances with Plasma, but as an OS aimed at creators I would recommend giving it a go for the included software, it even has Blender pre installed and all the Audio visual and graphics software you could want.
    • Ubuntu Mate 
      • Tony W
        • Available for Rpi, and I would think very usable
        • PERFORMANT on low powered machines (tested w/ Dell 7130)
        • Mate Welcome got a nice cosmetic refresh in 20.04 
        • Mate Tweak remains amazing, and now properly saves changes to each panel config to allow for switching back and forth
        • I love Mate’s Software Boutique
      • Moss – I tried installing this after the failure with the driver in Unity, for the primary purpose of seeing if the driver loaded, and had the same issue, so I didn’t go any further with it.
    • Lubuntu
      • Played with this a little bit. It’s a hard call between this and MATE for any VM that needs a GUI. Of which I have two. They run on Linux Mint Mate for now, but it’s so good to have options.
    • Xubuntu – nobody cares LOL
    • Ubuntu Kylin
      • Tony W – I had a very brief play with the live USB, had never tried Kylin before.  
        • Very friendly for Windows users.  
        • Chinese language remnants even if using English (expected). 
        • Kylin store is interesting
    • Ubuntu Cinnamon remix
      • Josh – I installed 20.04 and upgraded it to 20.10 no issues doing that whatsoever. 
        • Pros – 
          • Upgrade was a breeze
          • Cinnamon desktop is great and just what you would expect.
          • All the comforts of Ubuntu without the Gnome in the garden.
        • Cons – 
          • Theming is a little much with extensive use of orange
          • Not yet an “official” Flavor but is working on it
          • Not a ton of tools preinstalled like Linux Mint has
    • Ubuntu Budgie
      • Josh – Also installed 20.04 and upgraded to 20.10 again went smoothly.
        • Pros –
          • Budgie is a great and simple Desktop Environment
          • Again it is Ubuntu based so it has all the Ubuntu support
          • Great welcome screen with a ton of options!
        • Cons –
          • Weird implementation of the Budgie desktop
          • Theming was very inconsistent 
          • Tried the snap store (I know snaps ewwww) and had a weird transparency to it but still functioned as usual.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • John Wallis
  • John Wallis Part 2
  • Werewoelfchen

CHECK THIS OUT! 

Announcements:

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!>
]]> 4758 mintCast 347.5 – Sensational Silverback https://mintcast.org/mintcast-347-5-sensational-silverback/ Wed, 11 Nov 2020 04:44:21 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4750 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:39 Linux Innards
49:14 Vibrations from the Ether
53:30 Check This Out
56:34 Outro

In our Innards section, we cover our experiences with the flavors of Ubuntu 20.10!

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

  • Ubuntu 20.10 Tinkering
    • Ubuntu Proper
      • Pi Joe
        • Super easy to install.  Used the rpi-imager instead of etcher.  Very quick install 
        • It took a couple of tries to get the screen image to show up on the monitor that i was using but after that it was very much like a standard install of Ubuntu
        • Post initial setup i tried some of my standard application installs.  
          • X2go worked easy
          • Chrome browser did not because it is arm and the old method for getting chromium to work with netflix did not work either
          • Also installed audacity and mumble which seemed to work easy enough
          • I was able to install a docker version of chromium that did work with netflix and video played very smooth after a couple of minutes of dropped frames
        • I have to say that it is not the smoothest os i have seen on the pi but i am able to multitask on it.
        • I am familiar with gnome from the time that i was using fedora and it does work
        • Very standard linux but at least on the pi version it has this issue where it locks the screen at x time even when video is playing so i had to set it to not lock on its own
        • There were some obscure programs that i could not install because there was no arm version also
        • I wouldn’t want to use the pi long term as a desktop but it works well enough as a secondary or backup machine for me.  I was able to do daily tasks and browsing with it and video watching was smooth
        • Gnome did not seem to be a too much of a resource hog which had been a problem in the past.
    • Kubuntu
      • Leo – Just wow. Every time I jump on a Plasma desktop, I fall in love all over again. The more I do this, the more chances there are for it to stick!
      • The biggest downside to Kubuntu is Plasma quickly released a huge update in 5.20 after Kubuntu’s freeze. So Kubuntu folks will have to wait for 21.04 for those fixes and additions or jump on KDE Neon and slap on the HWE kernel and fixes there.
    • Ubuntu Unity 
      • Bo – I’ve been running it all week and…. I kinda like it.
        • The “window dodge” feature is missing
      • Moss – I’ve been running 20.04 all along, so I installed this. It would not install the Nvidia driver — the same driver which installed perfectly in 18.04 and 20.04. I think we’ve identified this as a kernel 5.8 issue, and I’ll talk a bit more about this in the next section.
    • Ubuntu Studio
      • Tony W – 
        • Implementation of ubiquity installer looks slick 
        • Menus look WAY more modern
          • Big change – descriptions added to each application without the need to hover mouse cursor
      • Moss – 
        • I downloaded it and tried it, but I could not get the panel to the bottom. Some things you just don’t have to live with. I’ll just add the tools to another flavor or even Mint.
      • Tony H –
        • I installed it on my Lenovo X230i last night, and it would not connect to my network WiFi, but would tether to the phone. I found out later that any other room in the house is fine but it can not connect to my WiFi network from the studio, so probably a hardware issue as no issue with my other machines. 
        • As for the OS it looks slick and seems very friendly with RAM use at 620Mb at boot and 1.5Gb with FireFox and 3 tabs open. The install and a couple of additional programs not included by default take 13.1Gb of HDD space so it needs at least 16Gb+ in a VM. So I would suggest a 32Gb USB Flash Drive if doing a persistent install to one.  
        • There are a few little annoyances with Plasma, but as an OS aimed at creators I would recommend giving it a go for the included software, it even has Blender pre installed and all the Audio visual and graphics software you could want.
    • Ubuntu Mate 
      • Tony W
        • Available for Rpi, and I would think very usable
        • PERFORMANT on low powered machines (tested w/ Dell 7130)
        • Mate Welcome got a nice cosmetic refresh in 20.04 
        • Mate Tweak remains amazing, and now properly saves changes to each panel config to allow for switching back and forth
        • I love Mate’s Software Boutique
      • Moss – I tried installing this after the failure with the driver in Unity, for the primary purpose of seeing if the driver loaded, and had the same issue, so I didn’t go any further with it.
    • Lubuntu
      • Played with this a little bit. It’s a hard call between this and MATE for any VM that needs a GUI. Of which I have two. They run on Linux Mint Mate for now, but it’s so good to have options.
    • Xubuntu – nobody cares LOL
    • Ubuntu Kylin
      • Tony W – I had a very brief play with the live USB, had never tried Kylin before.  
        • Very friendly for Windows users.  
        • Chinese language remnants even if using English (expected). 
        • Kylin store is interesting
    • Ubuntu Cinnamon remix
      • Josh – I installed 20.04 and upgraded it to 20.10 no issues doing that whatsoever. 
        • Pros – 
          • Upgrade was a breeze
          • Cinnamon desktop is great and just what you would expect.
          • All the comforts of Ubuntu without the Gnome in the garden.
        • Cons – 
          • Theming is a little much with extensive use of orange
          • Not yet an “official” Flavor but is working on it
          • Not a ton of tools preinstalled like Linux Mint has
    • Ubuntu Budgie
      • Josh – Also installed 20.04 and upgraded to 20.10 again went smoothly.
        • Pros –
          • Budgie is a great and simple Desktop Environment
          • Again it is Ubuntu based so it has all the Ubuntu support
          • Great welcome screen with a ton of options!
        • Cons –
          • Weird implementation of the Budgie desktop
          • Theming was very inconsistent 
          • Tried the snap store (I know snaps ewwww) and had a weird transparency to it but still functioned as usual.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • John Wallis
  • John Wallis Part 2
  • Werewoelfchen

CHECK THIS OUT! 

Announcements:

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!>
]]> 4750 mintCast 330 – Debbie Does Beta https://mintcast.org/mintcast-330-debbie-does-beta/ Wed, 11 Mar 2020 05:01:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4276 Then, our news we have plenty of Linux Mint and LMDE news, Raspberry Pi fixes its USB, apt upgrades, and more.
In security, we find out if AMD’s flaws are as bad as Intel’s.
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

Bi-weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

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

Download

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

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

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

Bi-weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> 4272 mintCast 328 – Sigh-DPI https://mintcast.org/mintcast-328-sigh-dpi/ Wed, 12 Feb 2020 05:51:56 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4215 Then in our news, Linux Mint goes HiDPI, Proton open-sources its VPN, Kernel 5.4 makes long-term support waves, Wireguard lands in Kernel 5.6, and more.
In security, your data is not safe. But we already knew that!
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

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

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

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

Download

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

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

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

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

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

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Josh for all his work on the website and the livestream
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about (Thanks, Clem!)
]]> 4213