Vibrations from the Ether – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Wed, 24 Apr 2024 20:45:30 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Vibrations from the Ether – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 164426984 435.5 – Pies and Wires https://mintcast.org/435-5-pies-and-wires/ Wed, 24 Apr 2024 20:45:27 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=6848 In our Innards section: Migrating Pihole and wireguard to an x86_64 system

In Vibrations from the Ether, we have listener feedback about malicious Linux developer vulnerabilities

And finally, in Check This Out, Bill discusses Fullup – The comprehensive update script for Arch Linux based systems

]]> In our Innards section: Migrating Pihole and wireguard to an x86_64 system

In Vibrations from the Ether, we have listener feedback about malicious Linux developer vulnerabilities

And finally, in Check This Out, Bill discusses Fullup – The comprehensive update script for Arch Linux based systems

Full Show Notes Here

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

  • Bill Houser for our audio editing
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time syncs and various other contributions
  • Bill Houser for hosting the server which runs our website, website maintenance, and the NextCloud server on which we host our show notes and raw audio
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about
  • <Thanks, Clem … and co!>
]]> 6848 376.5 – Getting Ac-CLI-mated https://mintcast.org/376-5-getting-ac-cli-mated/ Sat, 25 Dec 2021 23:46:06 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5309 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:30 Linux Innards
26:21 Vibrations from the Ether
33:13 Check This Out
35:44 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we talk about our favorite command line tools

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

Vibrations from the Ether

  • William H
  • Hilander

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5309 375.5 – One Is the Loneliest Number https://mintcast.org/375-5-one-is-the-loneliest-number/ Fri, 10 Dec 2021 08:51:33 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5293 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:46 Linux Innards
42:07 Vibrations from the Ether
51:07 Check This Out
54:28 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, fragmentation
And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

  • Joe
    • Inevitable
    • Innovative
    • Provides an outlet for many
    • Yes it is somewhat daunting for a new linux user to pick that first distro
  • Tony
    • One of the benefits and one of the drawbacks of a free and open culture in Linux. Some loved Distributions over the years have started because someone wanted things in ‘Their’ Linux system to be a certain way and initially released an ISO to share with others, some of these even live on after the original creator moves on.
    • Gives a wide variety of choices to the user. DE wise for me if Gnome was  the only option I would probably have gone back to Windows even windows 10 is more to my liking as a DE
    • As for Distroes the issue again is choice, some like a lightweight minimal system and only install the apps they use, while some prefer all the bells and whistles to be installed. This is also helpful if offline for long periods or on a Data capped ISP
  • Norbert
    • Choice of defaults
    • Not all may work
  • Josh
    • Freedom of choice lies at the heart of free open source software and is preferable to less choice
    • Good for devs as they get to work on the projects they are passionate about
    • Good for users who get to experience the vision of the devs
    • Differentiates Linux from proprietary OS’s
    • Choice paralysis is a thing but not in this case
    • Arguments for this being the reason that proprietary software companies don’t cater to Linux has been nullified by universal package formats
    • Drawback is that applications utilizing non-native toolkit can appear out of place

Vibrations from the Ether

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5293 374.5 – “Smart” Phones https://mintcast.org/374-5-smart-phones/ Fri, 26 Nov 2021 06:22:38 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5280 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:46 Linux Innards
42:07 Vibrations from the Ether
51:07 Check This Out
54:28 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, phones
And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

  • Joe
    • First smartphone was the samsung behold 2 which i hated
    • I also had the htc dash which was a blackberry knockoff but pretty awesome
    • Then the htc hd2 which is the most modded phone ever
      • Windows mobile
      • Android
      • Linux
    • After that i went back to samsung and had the s3 which is a great phone and if you can find one that is working still has its uses.  My son is using one now
      • I used this phone until it died, smaller device but ran well and did everything i needed
      • Still good today as an MP3 player which is what my son uses it for
    • Then the Note 3
      • I used this for a long time
    • S7
      • I still use this for some things but the ports are getting old.  The 3.5mm jack no longer works and the usb connection is a bit wobbly
    • Note 10 plus
  • Tony
    • History – The First Smartphone I bought was the Nexus 4 which I got in February 2013. This was a great introduction to the smartphone experience but quickly started to feel restricted and in October 2014 I made the giant leap to a OnePlus1 which I paid £299 but was a premium phone for a mid range price at the time.
    • When that started to feel its age in 2017 I bought a Nokia 6, this was a great Phone and the following year I purchased the 6.1 upgrade for my wife who had been using my old Nexus 4 as her first Smartphone. Unfortunately I dropped the Nokia in 2018 smashing the screen badly and was sold the Huawei P20 lite which I used as my daily driver until last week when I went and bought the Nokia X20 6.6” behemoth which I am still getting used to.
    • This phone has the advantage of receiving guaranteed Android updates for 3 years from release and I should get to Android 14 before the time runs out from the current Android 11 that is installed.
    • Before retiring the OnePlus1 as my daily driver I did delve into the world of alternative Roms and successfully installed Lineage to it, but had an issue with upgrading it at one point and that led me to purchasing the Nokia 6. A while back I decided to have a play with the OnePlus1 and I have installed Ubuntu Touch to it and last night was playing with it and have got it running the latest update of the 16.04 install. I know that they are working on getting 20.04 and I have enabled this to be downloaded as an OTA update when available for the OnePlus1.
  • Norbert
    • 2010 – Neonode N2
    • 2010 – (Apple iPod Touch 4G)
    • 2014 – Sony Xperia SP
    • 2015 – Sony Xperia Z Ultra
    • 2016 – (Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 9.7”)
    • 2017 – Sony Xperia X Compact
    • 2019 – Samsung Galax
    • y A8 (2018)
    • 2021 – LG G7 ThinQ
  • Josh
    • My initial foray into the world of smartphones were all lower tier devices which were “free” with the signing of a contract. They were all quite terrible and that’s probably why I can’t remember any of them specifically.
    • My first noteworthy smartphone was a Nexus 5 which I purchased early in 2014. It was quite an impressive device for its price point and I still have it today as a backup phone, although it now runs Ubuntu Touch in place of Android. I have had to replace the battery on it once and it does suffer from the all too common power button issue on occasion that causes it to constantly reboot which is why I eventually moved on from it.
    • From there I decided I wanted to focus more on privacy so I went through a number of different flip and feature phones only to find most of them ran stripped down versions of Android and the lackluster performance was maddening. Just attempting to text while the system lagged caused multiple input errors but there was a bit of nostalgia returning to T9 predictive text.
    • I decided to return to the world of smartphones and purchased an LG V30+ off of Ebay. I got it at a very reduced price due to some screen burn in but the phone was pristine outside of that. This is still my daily driver today even though the OS hasn’t received a security update since August of 2019. The DAC is still considered by many to be the best ever put in a phone which is why I’m reluctant to replace it. I use it mainly for listening to music and podcasts and store as little personal data as possible on it.
    • I also purchased a Pinephone UB Ports edition and a Sony Xperia X which I installed Ubuntu Touch on with hopes that one of them could serve as a privacy focused daily driver. The Xperia is usable if you’re willing to compromise convenience quite considerably but the Pinephone remains little more than a developer’s toy that cannot be daily driven under any realistic circumstances. Unfortunately it seems the reality of a capable Linux phone is still quite a ways off into the distance, the hardware is there but the software is definitely not.

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Brad A
  • Larry M
  • William W

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5280 373.5 – App-Get Install https://mintcast.org/373-5-app-get-install/ Wed, 10 Nov 2021 07:03:36 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5267 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:39 Linux Innards
28:54 Vibrations from the Ether
35:16 Check This Out
41:57 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we discuss the applications that we use most often

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

  • Joe
    • Cura
    • Standard Notes
    • Resilio Sync
  • Tony
    • Firefox
    • GIMP
    • Inkscape
    • Audacity
  • Norbert
    • Brave
    • LibreOffice
    • OBS
    • Photoshop
    • Premiere Pro
    • Illustrator
  •  Josh
    • Firefox
    • Lollypop
    • EasyTAG
    • Syncthing
    • GnuCash

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Alfred

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5267 372.5 – The Tablet Chronicles https://mintcast.org/372-5-the-tablet-chronicles/ Wed, 27 Oct 2021 05:24:39 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5250 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:22 Linux Innards
36:00 Vibrations from the Ether
52:41 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, tablets

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Sarmen
  • David D
  • Dylan B

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Leo for our audio production
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logg
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5250 371.5 – Minus One https://mintcast.org/371-5-minus-one/ Wed, 13 Oct 2021 05:17:33 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5237 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:37 Linux Innards
35:41 Vibrations from the Ether
50:04 Check This Out
53:53 Announcements & Outro

In our innards this week the new guys discuss gtk theming

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Rob
  • Brad A

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

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

]]> 5237 370.5 – What Got You Into Linux? https://mintcast.org/370-5-what-got-you-into-linux/ Wed, 29 Sep 2021 05:09:39 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5221 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:49 Linux Innards
40:47 Vibrations from the Ether
56:22 Check This Out
1:04:09 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, an introduction to the new folks that will carry the show with Tony and Joe

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

  • What got you into linux?
  • What drove you to say “yes” to being on mintCast?
  • What do you love most about linux?
  • Where do you want mintCast to go in the next 12 months ?
  • What’s your current favorite distro?
  • What’s your current favorite desktop environment?

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Michel C
  • Brad A
  • William T
  • Henrik H

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio production
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logg
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5221 369.5 – The LMDE to Be https://mintcast.org/369-5-the-lmde-to-be/ Wed, 15 Sep 2021 06:16:12 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5207 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 2:02 Linux Innards
23:36 Vibrations from the Ether
44:48 Check This Out
50:36 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section Debian 11, and what that means for LMDE

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

What will LMDE 5 look like?

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Henrik
  • Hank
  • Raphaël
    • https://linuxmint-troubleshooting-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq.html

Check This Out

Announcements

  • If you had issues getting to mintCast.org over the past few weeks, there was an issue with billing even though we were all paid up. Thanks to Josh Lowe for wrangling everything for us. The site is back up and going strong.
  • Leo will be stepping down as Host for the foreseeable future starting with Episode 272. You’re in very capable hands and who knows? Maybe more community hosts!
    • I’m not going far. I’ll stay on to help produce the shows in content and editing, and I’ll likely be back with a voice where I can find the open weekends.
  • Next Episode – 2 pm US Central time on Sunday September 19, 2021
  • Get mintCast converted to your time zone
  • Next Live Stream –  2 pm US Central time on September 25, 2021

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!>
]]> 5207 368.5 – Pi and Coffee https://mintcast.org/368-5-pi-and-coffee/ Wed, 01 Sep 2021 07:04:00 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5190 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:59 Linux Innards
48:03 Vibrations from the Ether
55:26 Check This Out
59:19 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, Pi’s Pi’s and more Pi’s

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Linux Innards

  • Joe
  • Leo
    • Wireguard
      • Using fast.com
      • VM 1gbps – Wireguard 45mbps, Local Only 140mbps
      • Raspberry Pi 1gbps (300mbps effective) – Wireguard 30mbps (but took quite a while to ramp up), Local Only 65mbps
        • Generate keys with wg genkey | tee privkey | wg pubkey > pubkey
        • nano /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf
          • Set Private Key, Address, Listening port and iptables rules for the setup and tear down
          • Add client pubkey and the address it’s allowed to use
        • /etc/sysctl.conf
          • Uncomment net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
        • Bring it Up: sudo wg-quick up wg0
        • Bring it Down: sudo wg-quick down wg0
    • FreshRSS
    • Gitea

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Brad
  • Jeff
  • Hilander

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, 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!>
]]> 5190 366.5 – Protect Your Bits https://mintcast.org/366-5-protect-your-bits/ Wed, 04 Aug 2021 06:36:21 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5159 And finally, the feedback and a couple community choices
Download
]]> 1:56 Linux Innards
33:35 Vibrations from the Ether
49:15 Check This Out
59:02 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section we talk OpenVPN, Wireguard and staying safe online

And finally, the feedback and a couple community choices

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

Linux Innards

Vibrations from the Ether

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, 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!>
]]> 5159 mintCast 365.5 – The Test Drive https://mintcast.org/mintcast-365-5-the-test-drive/ Thu, 22 Jul 2021 07:58:09 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5147 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> 1:38 Linux Innards
22:57 Vibrations from the Ether
46:26 Check This Out
51:13 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we’ve been running Linux Mint 20.2. How about you?

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

Linux Innards

Mint 20.2 was released about 4 days ago as we record this and take our first look at our version of choice.

Vibrations from the Ether

Check This Out

  • Leo
  • Listener Jack
    • windy.com is a fantastic site for weather of all sorts. the amount of data in there is amazing and very nicely presented. maps for temperature, waves, clouds, rain, snow, wind, air quality,humidity… the list seems endless. also fires, webcams, surfing spots…

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!>
]]> 5147 mintCast 364.5 – Dynamic Audio https://mintcast.org/mintcast-364-5-dynamic-audio/ Wed, 07 Jul 2021 06:25:20 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5131 And finally, the feedback and a couple things to check out
Download
]]> 1:29 Linux Innards
39:02 Vibrations from the Ether
1:09:10 Check This Out
1:10:09 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we talk travelling studios

And finally, the feedback and a couple things to check out

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

Linux Innards

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Allan N.
  • Elizabeth T.
  • Brad A.

randstring:

#!/usr/local/bin/bash
COUNT=$1
if [ "$COUNT" = "" -o !"$COUNT" ] ; then
  echo "Enter a number of characters to generate", read $COUNT
fi
head -c $COUNT /dev/random | uuencode -m - | sed -n '2s/=*$//;2p' | cut -c1-$COUNT
  • John Wallis
  • A. Stombough
  • Stan R.

Check This Out

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, 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!>
]]> 5131 mintCast 362.5 – Party in the USR https://mintcast.org/mintcast-362-5-party-in-the-usr/ Wed, 09 Jun 2021 06:18:17 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5088 And finally, the feedback and a few suggestions
Download
]]> 3:24 Linux Innards
52:34 Vibrations from the Ether
1:10:46 Check this Out
1:13:19 Announcements & Outro

In the innards, system building and our testing distro choices

And finally, the feedback and a few suggestions

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

LINUX INNARDS:

PC Builds

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

CHECK THIS OUT! 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, 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!>
]]> 5088 mintCast 361.5 – X2Joe https://mintcast.org/mintcast-361-5-x2joe/ Wed, 26 May 2021 03:18:45 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5077 And finally, the feedback and a first look
Download
]]> Download

2:37 Linux Innards
43:52 Vibrations from the Ether
1:03:21 Check this Out
1:07:26 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we pick some of our favorite (free and?) open source software

And finally, the feedback and a first look

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

LINUX INNARDS:

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • Brad

CHECK THIS OUT! 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • We’re putting OGG to sleep. Forever.
    • Mp3 has been patentless for more than three years now and that’s free enough for us. It cuts down on back end workload since we do most everything manually when it comes to getting the show out there.
    • No need to change feeds! The mp3 will now come down in the OGG feed. Just don’t look under the covers, and hopefully absolutely nothing noticeable will change.
  • Moss extended hiatus
  • The New Saturday Show (mintNight? mintTalk? No official name yet.)
  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm US Central time on May 30, 2021.
  • Get the show time converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5077 mintCast 360.5 – What’s a Distro? (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-360-5-whats-a-distro-mp3/ Wed, 12 May 2021 04:54:27 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5062 And finally, the feedback and a humble suggestion
Download
]]> Download

2:11 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
43:58 The News
1:05:46 Security Update
1:07:29 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, what makes a distro a distro? It’s Elementary, my dear Watson.

And finally, the feedback and a humble suggestion

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

LINUX INNARDS:

  • When is a distro not a distro?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

CHECK THIS OUT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, 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!>
]]> 5062 mintCast 360.5 – What’s a Distro? https://mintcast.org/mintcast-360-5-whats-a-distro/ Wed, 12 May 2021 04:54:03 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5058 And finally, the feedback and a humble suggestion
Download
]]> Download

2:11 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
43:58 The News
1:05:46 Security Update
1:07:29 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, what makes a distro a distro? It’s Elementary, my dear Watson.

And finally, the feedback and a humble suggestion

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

LINUX INNARDS:

  • When is a distro not a distro?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

CHECK THIS OUT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, 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!>
]]> 5058 mintCast 359.5 – FLoC Blocked (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-359-5-floc-blocked-mp3/ Wed, 28 Apr 2021 06:34:58 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5039 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

2:30 Linux Innards
48:43 Vibrations from the Ether
57:56 Check This Out
1:08:03 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, another stroll down privacy lane

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Reddit.

LINUX INNARDS:

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

CHECK THIS OUT!

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!>
]]> 5039 mintCast 359.5 – FLoC Blocked https://mintcast.org/mintcast-359-5-floc-blocked/ Wed, 28 Apr 2021 06:31:21 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5034 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

2:30 Linux Innards
48:43 Vibrations from the Ether
57:56 Check This Out
1:08:03 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, another stroll down privacy lane

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Reddit.

LINUX INNARDS:

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

CHECK THIS OUT!

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!>
]]> 5034 mintCast 358.5 – Three Finger Swipes (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-358-5-three-finger-swipes-mp3/ Wed, 14 Apr 2021 06:42:02 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5017 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:41 Linux Innards
29:45 Vibrations from the Ether
48:25 Check This Out
1:20:20 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we cover Gnome 40 and try to keep it RMS-free

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

Gnome 40 

  • Leo
    • Did it all on a laptop.
    • Multi-touch is amazing.
      • Three-finger swipe up is Activities Overview
      • Another three-finger swipe up is App Grid
      • Three-finger swipe left moves to workspace 2. To the right is opposite.
      • X doesn’t seem compatible with three-finger anything
      • Horizontal workspaces are how my brain works. Unfortunate for those that prefer vertical. Surely there’ll be an extension eventually.
      • Speaking of extensions, it requires a flathub app, that, on Fedora, needs Flathub enabled first.
      • Tweaks is a separate app that is acquired from the repos.
      • The fact that you need to get both to be in control of your desktop, and those tools live in two separate, unrelated places is very annoying.
  • Joe
    • Well I guess it depends a lot on the setup.  I disliked it just as a bare install adding it to Endeavour but when I used Garuda Gnome and used the manjaro alpha update to gnome 40 it worked a lot better
    • The hot corner is very useful with a mouse but doesn’t go off for a touchscreen
    • The dual view of all the applications and workspaces works well for me and it allows me to use the different workspaces much more effectively 
    • It does look and work very smooth on Garuda but it is definitely not raw gnome 40, much theming was involved and I didnt have to do it myself
    • Such as in the bare version I noticed that the right click was not set.  But in Garuda it gave access to the background
    • I do like the way Gnome handles the super key showing all the running applications and allowing you to search all the installed applications and the repos that you use for things that are not installed which is nice since the hot corner doesn’t work with touch and the tablet has a dedicated super key button.
    • But all in all I have to say not that much different from what I have seen of gnome in the past.  It is not a massive leap forward or change
  • Mike 
    • Horrible if you use a mouse frequently. It is so annoying that windows hidden behind another window can’t be found easily.
  • TonyH
    • Last night I did a fresh install of EndeavorOS so I could get GNOME DE out of the box and with it I thought I would get GNOME 40 but alas not, still 3.38.4, so I will not be able to say much about it. But as far as I know it has not changed very much and as I don’t feel the need to spend 1-2 hours getting it half way usable for me I don’t see the point when I can use MATE.
  • Moss
    • It’s too new to get on any distro I would actually use. I will probably hate it anyhow. When Pop!_OS updates I’ll see what they did with it. It is amazing how tolerable Gnome 3.38 is on Pop! when I can’t stand it anywhere else. (Dale Miracle will verify that, on his brand new System76 Pangolin.)
  • Josh
    • Best Gnome release yet. I am not a Gnome fanboy by any means but this has been really nice overall.😎
    • First things first WORKING TOUCHPAD GESTURES! This has been the most amazing part of Gnome 40. No need to configure you just can use 3 fingers to navigate your desktop. I really like this feature because it reminds me of macOS, in that workflow is really nice with a touchpad. The only downside to this is it only works in Wayland and gaming does not work in Wayland so if you’re a gamer the biggest new feature of Gnome 40 is mute. 
    • Wayland is so much smoother than X.org by far I cannot wait till Wayland is fully integrated in all Linux desktops. As I mentioned before gaming does not work with Wayland so if you’re a gamer Wayland is not yet ready.
    • One gripe other than the gaming thing is if your touchpad is really sensitive it can be hard to navigate things.
    • To Mike’s point about windows being hidden while using a mouse, that is what the hot corner is for. The hot corner acts like hitting the super key or doing the 3 finger swipe.
    • I really did not hit any bugs so that’s a good thing 👍

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • Len
  • Hank Barta
  • Matthew
  • Brad
  • Londoner

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)

  • Dave

My Webster’s New World Dictionary, copyright 1959, shows the pronunciation of daemon to be dēmon (with a long e).

CHECK THIS OUT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5017 mintCast 358.5 – Three Finger Swipes https://mintcast.org/mintcast-358-5-three-finger-swipes/ Wed, 14 Apr 2021 06:32:31 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5010 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:41 Linux Innards
29:45 Vibrations from the Ether
48:25 Check This Out
1:20:20 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we cover Gnome 40 and try to keep it RMS-free

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

Gnome 40 

  • Leo
    • Did it all on a laptop.
    • Multi-touch is amazing.
      • Three-finger swipe up is Activities Overview
      • Another three-finger swipe up is App Grid
      • Three-finger swipe left moves to workspace 2. To the right is opposite.
      • X doesn’t seem compatible with three-finger anything
      • Horizontal workspaces are how my brain works. Unfortunate for those that prefer vertical. Surely there’ll be an extension eventually.
      • Speaking of extensions, it requires a flathub app, that, on Fedora, needs Flathub enabled first.
      • Tweaks is a separate app that is acquired from the repos.
      • The fact that you need to get both to be in control of your desktop, and those tools live in two separate, unrelated places is very annoying.
  • Joe
    • Well I guess it depends a lot on the setup.  I disliked it just as a bare install adding it to Endeavour but when I used Garuda Gnome and used the manjaro alpha update to gnome 40 it worked a lot better
    • The hot corner is very useful with a mouse but doesn’t go off for a touchscreen
    • The dual view of all the applications and workspaces works well for me and it allows me to use the different workspaces much more effectively 
    • It does look and work very smooth on Garuda but it is definitely not raw gnome 40, much theming was involved and I didnt have to do it myself
    • Such as in the bare version I noticed that the right click was not set.  But in Garuda it gave access to the background
    • I do like the way Gnome handles the super key showing all the running applications and allowing you to search all the installed applications and the repos that you use for things that are not installed which is nice since the hot corner doesn’t work with touch and the tablet has a dedicated super key button.
    • But all in all I have to say not that much different from what I have seen of gnome in the past.  It is not a massive leap forward or change
  • Mike 
    • Horrible if you use a mouse frequently. It is so annoying that windows hidden behind another window can’t be found easily.
  • TonyH
    • Last night I did a fresh install of EndeavorOS so I could get GNOME DE out of the box and with it I thought I would get GNOME 40 but alas not, still 3.38.4, so I will not be able to say much about it. But as far as I know it has not changed very much and as I don’t feel the need to spend 1-2 hours getting it half way usable for me I don’t see the point when I can use MATE.
  • Moss
    • It’s too new to get on any distro I would actually use. I will probably hate it anyhow. When Pop!_OS updates I’ll see what they did with it. It is amazing how tolerable Gnome 3.38 is on Pop! when I can’t stand it anywhere else. (Dale Miracle will verify that, on his brand new System76 Pangolin.)
  • Josh
    • Best Gnome release yet. I am not a Gnome fanboy by any means but this has been really nice overall.😎
    • First things first WORKING TOUCHPAD GESTURES! This has been the most amazing part of Gnome 40. No need to configure you just can use 3 fingers to navigate your desktop. I really like this feature because it reminds me of macOS, in that workflow is really nice with a touchpad. The only downside to this is it only works in Wayland and gaming does not work in Wayland so if you’re a gamer the biggest new feature of Gnome 40 is mute. 
    • Wayland is so much smoother than X.org by far I cannot wait till Wayland is fully integrated in all Linux desktops. As I mentioned before gaming does not work with Wayland so if you’re a gamer Wayland is not yet ready.
    • One gripe other than the gaming thing is if your touchpad is really sensitive it can be hard to navigate things.
    • To Mike’s point about windows being hidden while using a mouse, that is what the hot corner is for. The hot corner acts like hitting the super key or doing the 3 finger swipe.
    • I really did not hit any bugs so that’s a good thing 👍

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • Len
  • Hank Barta
  • Matthew
  • Brad
  • Londoner

From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)

  • Dave

My Webster’s New World Dictionary, copyright 1959, shows the pronunciation of daemon to be dēmon (with a long e).

CHECK THIS OUT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5010 mintCast 357.5 – The Endeavour Endeavor (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-357-5-the-endeavour-endeavor-mp3/ Wed, 31 Mar 2021 04:32:42 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=4994 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:38 Linux Innards
1:02:02 Vibrations from the Ether
1:21:06 Check This Out
1:23:10 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we answer the question “What’s missing” and dive into the world of Arch

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

  • Musings:
  • Is there any interest in us doing a review of Gnome 40?
    • Moss – No. I’ll wait for Pop!_OS to fix it first.
  • Listener Dylan Burger asked, “What one feature would you ask to be added to your daily driver distro?”
  • Endeavour OS
    • Joe – I run Arch.
      • I installed Endeavour on the 7140 which has been my go to now for a while for installing and testing distros.  
      • It being a tablet, I assumed there would be some vagaries right from the start
      • I do want to say that it installed easily enough and, big surprise, the keyboard and touchpad worked like a charm and had no disconnect issues that I have seen with other distros.
      • It also played Plex videos easily, which is something that the 7130 has been having issues with lately due to overhead, so I was very impressed.  I was able to install chrome from the aur and it was interesting for me to figure out how to install things.  Then I made my life a little easier by installing flatpaks and using appimages where possible
      • First problem I had was in setting up screen rotation.  I was able to find the setting and turn it on in cinnamon just like normal but then nothing would happen when I would rotate the screen.  Next issue that I noticed is that while I was able to see that there was a bluetooth radio it would not see the devices that I had in pairing mode.  Then I realized that despite the icon being there bluetooth was not installed and I was able to get it installed and running in a few minutes.  
        • Screen rotation also took some research and setup but I was able to get that working with a couple of installs and a reboot
      • This feels a bit nostalgic, having to dig up ways to fix things but I do understand that the concern comes when it is time to run updates
      • The next tool I tested was sshfs.  It worked great and was not hard to install at all once I learned the install commands.  Installing from an AUR is not difficult either. But back to sshfs I did not set up the automated connection and reconnection on internet connection.  But what I did was set up an alias to connect and disconnect the sshfs mount which is working very well.  I had tried to set up an executable but for some reason it would not work.  I think that as soon as the script was done running it would close out the connection.
      • I was able to get x2go working which was a bit of a chore getting all the dependencies and the config changes into place so that it would work properly but that does make research and installation easier.  I am able to work from my main machine and do installs directly on the device and view the changes.  This is helpful especially when the tablet has to charge.
      • I was able to get the AUR of Chrome installed but it is listed as out of date. Only since the 14th so not bad but still waiting to see when it will get updated.
      • That being said, I did the setup to mount an external microsd as the downloads folder which more than doubled my space as I am only using a 32Gb M.2 SSD and now the 64gb microSD. The problem comes in that the simlinking prevents running aurs directly from the downloads folder.  I have to move them to a non linked location in order to get them to work.  But I am going to keep this the way it is because of the limited space.  Unless I end up replacing the M.2 which I dont think will happen as I plan on selling this device on at some point
      • No surprise appimage worked fine for standard notes.  
      • I also installed steam but had to set a folder in the Downloads section as the install folder since that is the only place that had any space.
        • Also turned on Proton to test things out.  I installed GTAVC using proton but would not work.  Not sure if it is an issue with the speed of the microSD or the OS.
        • Steam streaming worked just as well on this device as I have seen it work on others.  During still frames it was very clear and good looking but with heavy movements there was artifacting and pixelation 
        • I also installed Torchlight 2, which is a Linux native game, and it also would not play.  I also tried turning off Proton and uninstalling and reinstalling just to make sure that it wasn’t installing the windows version anyway.  Then I did some research and found out I was back in dependency hell.  But this time I could not find all the packages that I would need
        • So I installed the flatpak which would not allow me to switch the library to the Downloads folder.  So I reinstalled Torchlight just to see and it still would not work .
        • GloriousEggroll’s Blog » How to get out of Wine Dependency hell
        • I should have pointed out I do these steps before installing Steam
  • Tony.
    • So I already had Endeavour installed on my Toshiba Z30 and had talked about it briefly on Distrohoppers Digest last episode. I have to say this is the only way I have used Arch, although I did try vanilla Arch at one point but after the initial install I could not get my WiFi to work and did not have the patience to figure it out, particularly as just after this Endeavour was released which made the process very easy to get to a working desktop.
    • For this install I used the net install option and chose to install the Mate DE as this is my preferred DE and has been since the demise of Gnome 2. The installer is very easy to use and dual booting with the install on Mint 20 was not an issue, after the install had completed at first boot I was presented with 2 options for Endeavour and 10 for Mint, While I know why they are there they should be in a dropdown menu of options as they are with other Linux installs, which can be collapsed or expanded as required.
    • I managed to install Snapd but so far have not installed any snap packages, I read on the Wiki that Snap and Flatpacks are still work in progress, so a bit hit and miss. I tried get-iplayer which is the main programme I need snapd for, but it could not find the package. I did install Audacity last night expecting the latest 3.0 package and was surprised to find it wasn’t even the latest 2.4.x version only being 2.4.1, so I’m not sure what that is about. I have tried the AUR  without any success there either. 
    • Updates have not been a problem as I run the updater every time I start the system using the welcome screen button. Even after a couple of weeks without using the system it worked flawlessly, but I would not want to try that for too long, due to the risk of broken repositories.
  • Moss – The answer to Leo’s question is, No, but I really like *Manjaro* Cinnamon.
    • I had the same boot problem as I‘ve mentioned before and what Tony was just talking about: it creates multiple boot entries for each of the other distros on the hard drive, and no matter how many times I clean it up using Grub Customizer, it creates more (although fewer than the first time). If they are options, as Tony posited, they surely don’t give you any information on why each line exists, they all look identical to me. I posted some screenshots to the Telegram group, maybe to Discord as well.
      • LXQt desktop here is a mess. I try to use a different workspace and the screen goes blank blue with no controls. Sometimes I can get it back, sometimes I can’t, and sometimes the system just locks up.
      • So I switched to Budgie. I wasn’t expecting to see a Gnome footprint for the menu icon, but there it was. The bottom taskbar from LXQt was still there, but was not functional. 
      • There are a lot of really nice touches, but the papercuts are bigger than the successes. I managed to get all my (few) games installed. But when I changed desktops, Budgie couldn’t even find things I’d installed using LXQt Desktop. I knew they wouldn’t be on the taskbar, but they don’t show up on the menus.
      • I couldn’t finish two days with Endeavour and installed something else.
  • Josh 
    • Endeavor is not the Linux distro for me.
    • I installed it on both my HP Stream dual core 1.1GHz 4gb RAM 32Gb EMMC and my Desktop which is a custom build with Ryzen 5800X with 16Gb 3200MHz RAM and a Nvidia 1650 Super so my PC may not be the best but it’s no slouch.
    • It installed fine on both systems with no issues but that is where the fun ends for me.
    • On my HP Stream I wanted to install a GUI for pacman called pamac because I cannot stand yay and pacman on the command line. I started by typing in yay pamac and was greeted with about 25 or so choices and I had no idea what to choose. I just chose one and went on my way and after over 10 minutes! It was installed but lo and behold pamac was not actually installed. I tried looking for it in my menu and on the command line but nothing so well I decided maybe I did something wrong in the installer so I just reinstalled Endeavor. This time when I installed it I was not asked what desktop I wanted so I just kept going and when it was done it was xfce yuck! So I reinstalled again and this time it was plasma cause it gave me the option to use that one. So now finally I try installing pamac again and this time it actually installed and I could use it thank goodness.
    • My desktop was another story. I actually got it installed and everything no problem, pamac installed flawlessly and since it had the nvidia drivers preinstalled I didn’t have to fiddle with any display stuff. I installed steam cause this is my gaming rig and I tried to play some games and well let’s just say It wasn’t the best experience on linux. The games would stutter and have screen tearing. I did mitigate this by installing gamemode that Ubuntu has pre installed that helps turn the governor to max on your cpu and does other gaming optimization. Even with that installed it still had major issues and I just couldn’t game with it so back to Mint I went.
  • Mike – I have notes
  • Leo – Me too
    • Warpinator, Web App Manager, Hypnotix
    • Steam – > Retro City Rampage (native), Brawlhalla (Steam Play)
    • Brave, Edge from AUR

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

Error found when loading /etc/profile:

/etc/profile: line 29: /etc/profile: Permission denied

Leo’s Response

ls -l /etc/profile 

-rw-r–r– 1 root root 581 Dec  5  2019 /etc/profile

sudo chmod 644 /etc/profile

  • Highlander [Moss]

CHECK THIS OUT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4994 mintCast 357.5 – The Endeavour Endeavor https://mintcast.org/mintcast-357-5-the-endeavour-endeavor/ Wed, 31 Mar 2021 04:18:18 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=4988 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:38 Linux Innards
1:02:02 Vibrations from the Ether
1:21:06 Check This Out
1:23:10 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we answer the question “What’s missing” and dive into the world of Arch

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

  • Musings:
  • Is there any interest in us doing a review of Gnome 40?
    • Moss – No. I’ll wait for Pop!_OS to fix it first.
  • Listener Dylan Burger asked, “What one feature would you ask to be added to your daily driver distro?”
  • Endeavour OS
    • Joe – I run Arch.
      • I installed Endeavour on the 7140 which has been my go to now for a while for installing and testing distros.  
      • It being a tablet, I assumed there would be some vagaries right from the start
      • I do want to say that it installed easily enough and, big surprise, the keyboard and touchpad worked like a charm and had no disconnect issues that I have seen with other distros.
      • It also played Plex videos easily, which is something that the 7130 has been having issues with lately due to overhead, so I was very impressed.  I was able to install chrome from the aur and it was interesting for me to figure out how to install things.  Then I made my life a little easier by installing flatpaks and using appimages where possible
      • First problem I had was in setting up screen rotation.  I was able to find the setting and turn it on in cinnamon just like normal but then nothing would happen when I would rotate the screen.  Next issue that I noticed is that while I was able to see that there was a bluetooth radio it would not see the devices that I had in pairing mode.  Then I realized that despite the icon being there bluetooth was not installed and I was able to get it installed and running in a few minutes.  
        • Screen rotation also took some research and setup but I was able to get that working with a couple of installs and a reboot
      • This feels a bit nostalgic, having to dig up ways to fix things but I do understand that the concern comes when it is time to run updates
      • The next tool I tested was sshfs.  It worked great and was not hard to install at all once I learned the install commands.  Installing from an AUR is not difficult either. But back to sshfs I did not set up the automated connection and reconnection on internet connection.  But what I did was set up an alias to connect and disconnect the sshfs mount which is working very well.  I had tried to set up an executable but for some reason it would not work.  I think that as soon as the script was done running it would close out the connection.
      • I was able to get x2go working which was a bit of a chore getting all the dependencies and the config changes into place so that it would work properly but that does make research and installation easier.  I am able to work from my main machine and do installs directly on the device and view the changes.  This is helpful especially when the tablet has to charge.
      • I was able to get the AUR of Chrome installed but it is listed as out of date. Only since the 14th so not bad but still waiting to see when it will get updated.
      • That being said, I did the setup to mount an external microsd as the downloads folder which more than doubled my space as I am only using a 32Gb M.2 SSD and now the 64gb microSD. The problem comes in that the simlinking prevents running aurs directly from the downloads folder.  I have to move them to a non linked location in order to get them to work.  But I am going to keep this the way it is because of the limited space.  Unless I end up replacing the M.2 which I dont think will happen as I plan on selling this device on at some point
      • No surprise appimage worked fine for standard notes.  
      • I also installed steam but had to set a folder in the Downloads section as the install folder since that is the only place that had any space.
        • Also turned on Proton to test things out.  I installed GTAVC using proton but would not work.  Not sure if it is an issue with the speed of the microSD or the OS.
        • Steam streaming worked just as well on this device as I have seen it work on others.  During still frames it was very clear and good looking but with heavy movements there was artifacting and pixelation 
        • I also installed Torchlight 2, which is a Linux native game, and it also would not play.  I also tried turning off Proton and uninstalling and reinstalling just to make sure that it wasn’t installing the windows version anyway.  Then I did some research and found out I was back in dependency hell.  But this time I could not find all the packages that I would need
        • So I installed the flatpak which would not allow me to switch the library to the Downloads folder.  So I reinstalled Torchlight just to see and it still would not work .
        • GloriousEggroll’s Blog » How to get out of Wine Dependency hell
        • I should have pointed out I do these steps before installing Steam
  • Tony.
    • So I already had Endeavour installed on my Toshiba Z30 and had talked about it briefly on Distrohoppers Digest last episode. I have to say this is the only way I have used Arch, although I did try vanilla Arch at one point but after the initial install I could not get my WiFi to work and did not have the patience to figure it out, particularly as just after this Endeavour was released which made the process very easy to get to a working desktop.
    • For this install I used the net install option and chose to install the Mate DE as this is my preferred DE and has been since the demise of Gnome 2. The installer is very easy to use and dual booting with the install on Mint 20 was not an issue, after the install had completed at first boot I was presented with 2 options for Endeavour and 10 for Mint, While I know why they are there they should be in a dropdown menu of options as they are with other Linux installs, which can be collapsed or expanded as required.
    • I managed to install Snapd but so far have not installed any snap packages, I read on the Wiki that Snap and Flatpacks are still work in progress, so a bit hit and miss. I tried get-iplayer which is the main programme I need snapd for, but it could not find the package. I did install Audacity last night expecting the latest 3.0 package and was surprised to find it wasn’t even the latest 2.4.x version only being 2.4.1, so I’m not sure what that is about. I have tried the AUR  without any success there either. 
    • Updates have not been a problem as I run the updater every time I start the system using the welcome screen button. Even after a couple of weeks without using the system it worked flawlessly, but I would not want to try that for too long, due to the risk of broken repositories.
  • Moss – The answer to Leo’s question is, No, but I really like *Manjaro* Cinnamon.
    • I had the same boot problem as I‘ve mentioned before and what Tony was just talking about: it creates multiple boot entries for each of the other distros on the hard drive, and no matter how many times I clean it up using Grub Customizer, it creates more (although fewer than the first time). If they are options, as Tony posited, they surely don’t give you any information on why each line exists, they all look identical to me. I posted some screenshots to the Telegram group, maybe to Discord as well.
      • LXQt desktop here is a mess. I try to use a different workspace and the screen goes blank blue with no controls. Sometimes I can get it back, sometimes I can’t, and sometimes the system just locks up.
      • So I switched to Budgie. I wasn’t expecting to see a Gnome footprint for the menu icon, but there it was. The bottom taskbar from LXQt was still there, but was not functional. 
      • There are a lot of really nice touches, but the papercuts are bigger than the successes. I managed to get all my (few) games installed. But when I changed desktops, Budgie couldn’t even find things I’d installed using LXQt Desktop. I knew they wouldn’t be on the taskbar, but they don’t show up on the menus.
      • I couldn’t finish two days with Endeavour and installed something else.
  • Josh 
    • Endeavor is not the Linux distro for me.
    • I installed it on both my HP Stream dual core 1.1GHz 4gb RAM 32Gb EMMC and my Desktop which is a custom build with Ryzen 5800X with 16Gb 3200MHz RAM and a Nvidia 1650 Super so my PC may not be the best but it’s no slouch.
    • It installed fine on both systems with no issues but that is where the fun ends for me.
    • On my HP Stream I wanted to install a GUI for pacman called pamac because I cannot stand yay and pacman on the command line. I started by typing in yay pamac and was greeted with about 25 or so choices and I had no idea what to choose. I just chose one and went on my way and after over 10 minutes! It was installed but lo and behold pamac was not actually installed. I tried looking for it in my menu and on the command line but nothing so well I decided maybe I did something wrong in the installer so I just reinstalled Endeavor. This time when I installed it I was not asked what desktop I wanted so I just kept going and when it was done it was xfce yuck! So I reinstalled again and this time it was plasma cause it gave me the option to use that one. So now finally I try installing pamac again and this time it actually installed and I could use it thank goodness.
    • My desktop was another story. I actually got it installed and everything no problem, pamac installed flawlessly and since it had the nvidia drivers preinstalled I didn’t have to fiddle with any display stuff. I installed steam cause this is my gaming rig and I tried to play some games and well let’s just say It wasn’t the best experience on linux. The games would stutter and have screen tearing. I did mitigate this by installing gamemode that Ubuntu has pre installed that helps turn the governor to max on your cpu and does other gaming optimization. Even with that installed it still had major issues and I just couldn’t game with it so back to Mint I went.
  • Mike – I have notes
  • Leo – Me too
    • Warpinator, Web App Manager, Hypnotix
    • Steam – > Retro City Rampage (native), Brawlhalla (Steam Play)
    • Brave, Edge from AUR

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

Error found when loading /etc/profile:

/etc/profile: line 29: /etc/profile: Permission denied

Leo’s Response

ls -l /etc/profile 

-rw-r–r– 1 root root 581 Dec  5  2019 /etc/profile

sudo chmod 644 /etc/profile

  • Highlander [Moss]

CHECK THIS OUT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4988 mintCast 356.5 – Itty Bitty Living Space (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-356-5-itty-bitty-living-space-mp3/ Wed, 17 Mar 2021 03:52:54 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4970 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:57 Linux Innards
30:28 Vibrations from the Ether
55:19 Check This Out
59:22 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we talk Compression

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

Compression

  • Joe
    • I tried to use the built in tool to compress my home drive but kept running into permissions problems even as root. 
    • So I used tar.gz in order to test the compression on my Downloads folder which started out as 58.8 gb and ended up at like 55 gb so not much savings in space
  • TonyH  
    • I ran .tar.gz on my desktop folder which was 40.3Gb I backed this folder up to one of my external 4Tb drives I use for backup and storage and after completion the new folder was 33.3Gb so a saving of 7Gb just on this one folder, so if space was an issue this would be a good way to backup folders and save some space. Just for comparison, 7Gb is larger than the 6Gb HDD I had in my first Windows PC back in late 1998 and that was a decent amount of storage for the time, lol.  
  • Moss
    • I keep most of my files most people keep in Home on an external drive, so there wasn’t much in my Home folder to compress. In fact, my Home folder was only 1.5 Gb; running compression, the resulting files were each 1.7 Gb. I ran both .tar.gz and .tar.7z for comparison with no difference. Maybe I should check compression on my external, but I’m not sure I have room anywhere for a file which would hold all that. /dev/sdb is a 512 Gb drive with only 145 Gb free…
  • Josh
    • I mainly tested my compression on my .img backups of my internal nvme drive with about 506 GB of data on it using dd and partclone to image the disk and pigz to compress. I tried both 7z and gzip but for this task both of them take way too long at over 5 hours estimated time. 
    • Rescuezilla won the speed of compression coming in at 55 minutes. The compressed size was tied with Partclone+pigz at 383GB. I am unsure of the exact command it uses.
    • Partclone + pigz came in second at 57 minutes. The compressed size as I have stated earlier is exactly the same as Rescuzilla at 383GB. The command I used to achieve this was.
      • partclone.ntfs -c -s /dev/nvme0n1p3 | pigz -9 > /mnt/backup/backup.img.gz
    • dd + pigz came in 3rd at 1H 38M. The compressed size was a little larger than the other two at 387GB and the command I used to achieve all this was.
      • dd if=/dev/nvme0n1p3 | pv | pigz -9 > /mnt/backup/backup.img.gz
    • As I said before 7z took too long. I am not sure why this is but it is supposed to be multithreaded but when looking at htop only one thread was in use. In a later test of compressing a folder I had it actually did use all my cores to compress and the time it took was not that long. I cannot use that to compare against my other findings because it was not the same file I was compressing but I think it would perform close to the others.
  • Leo
    • For long compressions, install and use progress to monitor that state of tar.
      • sudo apt install progress
      • progress -m
      • It won’t tell you the status of the whole compression process, but will tell you the status of each file, at least letting you know that it’s working and will exit automatically when done.
    • I currently have a 1.2GB home folder on this machine. Mostly downloaded files like a Lineage image, nyquist plugins for audacity, and a little more than half of the size is pictures.
      • xz
        • tar -cJf /media/leo/Ventoy/Backup/home.tar.xz ~/*
        • Done in about 5 minutes
        • 2nd Best compression: 1,128,815,932 bytes
      • gz
        • tar -czf /media/leo/Ventoy/Backup/home.tar.gz ~/*
        • Done in 1 minute
        • Worst compression: 1,143,787,050 bytes
      • bz2
        • tar -cjf /media/leo/Ventoy/Backup/home.tar.bz2 ~/*
        • Done in 2.5 minutes
        • Middling compression: 1,140,996,181 bytes
      • 7z
        • 7z a /media/leo/Ventoy/Backup/home.7z ~/*
        • Done in 45 seconds
        • Best compression: 1,127,056,501 bytes
    • All the algorithms seemed to have saved me about 10% on the backup.
    • Josh and I have been playing around with pigz, which is a rewrite of gzip to include multi-core CPU support. To do the same backup as above:
      • sudo apt install pigz
      • tar –use-compress-program=”pigz –best –recursive” -cf /media/leo/Ventoy/Backup/home.tar.gz ~/*
      • Done in about 30 seconds
      • Ever so slightly worse compression than gz? Approximately 1MB diff.
        • 1,144,479,482 bytes

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

Leo

    • accounts-daemon.service
      • It can safely be disabled, because dbus will start it when needed.
      • It’s used mostly for graphical apps that handle users.
      • Masking will break these apps.
    • acct.service
      • It can safely be disabled if you don’t care about account and session usage stats.
      • acct tracks things like how long you’ve been logged in, which commands you’ve run, etc.
      • Masking won’t likely break anything visible.
    • acpid.service
      • Understand before disabling
      • This one handles hardware actions. Plugging in headphones, brightness buttons on the laptop, etc.
      • Masking may break these.
    • alsa-state.service
      • Understand before disabling
      • This DIEMON will monitor the state and settings of your sound card. The volume settings, mute, sound card selection, etc.
      • Masking may force ALSA to forget these things.
    • anacron.service
      • Disabling will prevent anacron from running timed scripts.
      • Anacron is like lazy cron. If you have scripts run by anacron, they will fail to execute.
  • Mike F

CHECK THIS OUT!

  • Leo
    • Can you beat 1024 bytes of code in chess? Kilobyte’s Gambit
    • Noti notifies you of completed commands in Telegram
  • Bo – NoiseTorch is a real-time microphone noise suppression application for Linux
  • Moss
    • JingOS, a phone/tablet Linux OS which aims to replicate iOS, announced they will not release version 0.7 and will instead release version 0.8 on March 31, claiming it will be a full-featured Linux, and in the future will be releasing as OTA. It looks great, hope they can pull it off.
    • For all you Mandrakers out there, Rosa Fresh R11 is also out.This fork is by the Russians who were co-developers of the last official version of Mandriva, and is the base for OpenMandriva Lx. I do not myself recommend Rosa. If you’re more of an Enterprise user, Rosa Enterprise Server is a fork of RHEL.
    • Listener Dylan Burger asked the Distrohoppers’ team, “What one feature would you ask to be added to your daily driver distro?” We’re saving that topic for a future show.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

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

Get the show time converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4970 mintCast 356.5 – Itty Bitty Living Space https://mintcast.org/mintcast-356-5-itty-bitty-living-space/ Wed, 17 Mar 2021 03:40:08 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4966 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:57 Linux Innards
30:28 Vibrations from the Ether
55:19 Check This Out
59:22 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we talk Compression

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

Compression

  • Joe
    • I tried to use the built in tool to compress my home drive but kept running into permissions problems even as root. 
    • So I used tar.gz in order to test the compression on my Downloads folder which started out as 58.8 gb and ended up at like 55 gb so not much savings in space
  • TonyH  
    • I ran .tar.gz on my desktop folder which was 40.3Gb I backed this folder up to one of my external 4Tb drives I use for backup and storage and after completion the new folder was 33.3Gb so a saving of 7Gb just on this one folder, so if space was an issue this would be a good way to backup folders and save some space. Just for comparison, 7Gb is larger than the 6Gb HDD I had in my first Windows PC back in late 1998 and that was a decent amount of storage for the time, lol.  
  • Moss
    • I keep most of my files most people keep in Home on an external drive, so there wasn’t much in my Home folder to compress. In fact, my Home folder was only 1.5 Gb; running compression, the resulting files were each 1.7 Gb. I ran both .tar.gz and .tar.7z for comparison with no difference. Maybe I should check compression on my external, but I’m not sure I have room anywhere for a file which would hold all that. /dev/sdb is a 512 Gb drive with only 145 Gb free…
  • Josh
    • I mainly tested my compression on my .img backups of my internal nvme drive with about 506 GB of data on it using dd and partclone to image the disk and pigz to compress. I tried both 7z and gzip but for this task both of them take way too long at over 5 hours estimated time. 
    • Rescuezilla won the speed of compression coming in at 55 minutes. The compressed size was tied with Partclone+pigz at 383GB. I am unsure of the exact command it uses.
    • Partclone + pigz came in second at 57 minutes. The compressed size as I have stated earlier is exactly the same as Rescuzilla at 383GB. The command I used to achieve this was.
      • partclone.ntfs -c -s /dev/nvme0n1p3 | pigz -9 > /mnt/backup/backup.img.gz
    • dd + pigz came in 3rd at 1H 38M. The compressed size was a little larger than the other two at 387GB and the command I used to achieve all this was.
      • dd if=/dev/nvme0n1p3 | pv | pigz -9 > /mnt/backup/backup.img.gz
    • As I said before 7z took too long. I am not sure why this is but it is supposed to be multithreaded but when looking at htop only one thread was in use. In a later test of compressing a folder I had it actually did use all my cores to compress and the time it took was not that long. I cannot use that to compare against my other findings because it was not the same file I was compressing but I think it would perform close to the others.
  • Leo
    • For long compressions, install and use progress to monitor that state of tar.
      • sudo apt install progress
      • progress -m
      • It won’t tell you the status of the whole compression process, but will tell you the status of each file, at least letting you know that it’s working and will exit automatically when done.
    • I currently have a 1.2GB home folder on this machine. Mostly downloaded files like a Lineage image, nyquist plugins for audacity, and a little more than half of the size is pictures.
      • xz
        • tar -cJf /media/leo/Ventoy/Backup/home.tar.xz ~/*
        • Done in about 5 minutes
        • 2nd Best compression: 1,128,815,932 bytes
      • gz
        • tar -czf /media/leo/Ventoy/Backup/home.tar.gz ~/*
        • Done in 1 minute
        • Worst compression: 1,143,787,050 bytes
      • bz2
        • tar -cjf /media/leo/Ventoy/Backup/home.tar.bz2 ~/*
        • Done in 2.5 minutes
        • Middling compression: 1,140,996,181 bytes
      • 7z
        • 7z a /media/leo/Ventoy/Backup/home.7z ~/*
        • Done in 45 seconds
        • Best compression: 1,127,056,501 bytes
    • All the algorithms seemed to have saved me about 10% on the backup.
    • Josh and I have been playing around with pigz, which is a rewrite of gzip to include multi-core CPU support. To do the same backup as above:
      • sudo apt install pigz
      • tar –use-compress-program=”pigz –best –recursive” -cf /media/leo/Ventoy/Backup/home.tar.gz ~/*
      • Done in about 30 seconds
      • Ever so slightly worse compression than gz? Approximately 1MB diff.
        • 1,144,479,482 bytes

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

Leo

    • accounts-daemon.service
      • It can safely be disabled, because dbus will start it when needed.
      • It’s used mostly for graphical apps that handle users.
      • Masking will break these apps.
    • acct.service
      • It can safely be disabled if you don’t care about account and session usage stats.
      • acct tracks things like how long you’ve been logged in, which commands you’ve run, etc.
      • Masking won’t likely break anything visible.
    • acpid.service
      • Understand before disabling
      • This one handles hardware actions. Plugging in headphones, brightness buttons on the laptop, etc.
      • Masking may break these.
    • alsa-state.service
      • Understand before disabling
      • This DIEMON will monitor the state and settings of your sound card. The volume settings, mute, sound card selection, etc.
      • Masking may force ALSA to forget these things.
    • anacron.service
      • Disabling will prevent anacron from running timed scripts.
      • Anacron is like lazy cron. If you have scripts run by anacron, they will fail to execute.
  • Mike F

CHECK THIS OUT!

  • Leo
    • Can you beat 1024 bytes of code in chess? Kilobyte’s Gambit
    • Noti notifies you of completed commands in Telegram
  • Bo – NoiseTorch is a real-time microphone noise suppression application for Linux
  • Moss
    • JingOS, a phone/tablet Linux OS which aims to replicate iOS, announced they will not release version 0.7 and will instead release version 0.8 on March 31, claiming it will be a full-featured Linux, and in the future will be releasing as OTA. It looks great, hope they can pull it off.
    • For all you Mandrakers out there, Rosa Fresh R11 is also out.This fork is by the Russians who were co-developers of the last official version of Mandriva, and is the base for OpenMandriva Lx. I do not myself recommend Rosa. If you’re more of an Enterprise user, Rosa Enterprise Server is a fork of RHEL.
    • Listener Dylan Burger asked the Distrohoppers’ team, “What one feature would you ask to be added to your daily driver distro?” We’re saving that topic for a future show.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

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

Get the show time converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

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

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

]]> 4966 mintCast 355.5 – McKnight in Shining Armor (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-355-5-mcknight-in-shining-armor-mp3/ Wed, 03 Mar 2021 05:39:05 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4945 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:49 Linux Innards
27:06 Vibrations from the Ether
51:29 Check This Out
58:45 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we talk to community member Mike!

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

Interview Section: Mike

  • What was your first Linux experience?
  • What was the very first Linux distro you ran?
  • What other distros do/have you run?
  • What’s a typical workflow for you entail?
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remmina
  • Does Linux do everything you need in a system?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • Henrik Hemrin

https://www.hemrin.com/business-blog/184-how-ram-memory-hungry-are-linux-distros

  • hilander
  • John Wallis
wpa_supplicant.service:                        [ UNSAFE ]
user@1000.service:                             [ UNSAFE ]
thermald.service:                              [ UNSAFE ]
getty@tty7.service:                            [ UNSAFE ]
udisks2.service:                               [ UNSAFE ]

CHECK THIS OUT!

Daemon (novel series) Daniel Suarez

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on March 7, 2021.

Get the show time converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4945 mintCast 355.5 – McKnight in Shining Armor https://mintcast.org/mintcast-355-5-mcknight-in-shining-armor/ Wed, 03 Mar 2021 05:29:22 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4941 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:49 Linux Innards
27:06 Vibrations from the Ether
51:29 Check This Out
58:45 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we talk to community member Mike!

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

Interview Section: Mike

  • What was your first Linux experience?
  • What was the very first Linux distro you ran?
  • What other distros do/have you run?
  • What’s a typical workflow for you entail?
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remmina
  • Does Linux do everything you need in a system?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • Henrik Hemrin

https://www.hemrin.com/business-blog/184-how-ram-memory-hungry-are-linux-distros

  • hilander
  • John Wallis
wpa_supplicant.service:                        [ UNSAFE ]
user@1000.service:                             [ UNSAFE ]
thermald.service:                              [ UNSAFE ]
getty@tty7.service:                            [ UNSAFE ]
udisks2.service:                               [ UNSAFE ]

CHECK THIS OUT!

Daemon (novel series) Daniel Suarez

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on March 7, 2021.

Get the show time converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4941 mintCast 354.5 – Everyone Has an Opinion (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-354-everyone-has-an-opinion-mp3/ Tue, 16 Feb 2021 05:46:05 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4924 Then, in the News, a Linux Mint update, Ubuntu loses the lead, Wayland changes, and some new releases
In Security, time to patch… again.
Download
]]> Download

1:30 Linux Innards
33:12 Vibrations from the Ether
51:24 Check This Out
53:45 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, We discuss chromium and how to pick a distro

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

More Chromium Talk – Leo

  • What do we use?
  • Chromium-based? Firefox?
  • The monoculture…

What’s My Distro? – Moss

As I was just pressed into service on this topic yesterday, some early bits of this article were borrowed from or inspired by the article, “What Does The Penguin Say?” on LinuxInsider.com,

So Windows gives you “Windows the Windows Way”, Mac gives you “Mac the Mac Way”, and Linux gives you… everything you ever dreamed of — or your worst nightmares — in a user salad of options.

Just look at the desktop paradigms.

  • Does the desktop try to capture a “traditional” or revolutionary desktop interface paradigm?
  • Does it favor sleekness or no-frills functionality?
  • Do the developers strive for constant evolution or stability and consistency?
  • Are windows, menus, and settings panels minimalist or information-dense?
  • Should users accept the UI as it is, or make it their own?

As founder and co-host of Distrohoppers’ Digest, these and other issues come to the fore. 

  • Which installer does it use, or do they write their own? 
    • Ubiquity – most Ubuntu, Mint
    • Calamares – other Ubuntu, Ubuntu forks, GeckoLinux, and others
    • Anaconda – Fedora
    • Debian-Installer
    • YaST

Now that Ubuntu is setting off writing an all-new installer, this issue is even more timely. How will it be better than Ubiquity? Anyone who has used Calamares has a few answers to that one. But can it be better than Calamares? What about flexibility? Some users of OpenSUSE claim their installer is better than Calamares because it has much more and better options, while others, like me, say those options are not the least understood by most users.

… or does the distro provide a pure image (.img) file, and you have to install GRUB or another bootloader yourself? (EasyOS)

  • Which package manager do they use, or do they write their own?
    • APT with .deb packages (or .rpm packages, in PCLinuxOS)
    • Portage or Entropy
    • URPM, dnf
    • pacman, pamac
    • YUM
    • YaST, zypper
    • eopkg
    • .pup, .snf, you name it

I guess next would be to discuss families, which mostly boils down to:

  • Debian Family
    • Ubuntu sub-family – probably 90-95% of all desktop Linux users
      • Ubuntu
      • Ubuntu wannabes, remixes, respins
      • Linux Mint
      • Indies (Peppermint, FerenOS, Zorin)
    • Independents
  • Slackware Family
    • OpenSUSE variants
  • Red Hat Family
    • Red Hat variants (Fedora, Scientific, CentOS, Rocky, Clear, Oracle)
    • Mandrake variants (PCLinuxOS, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Rosa)
  • Arch Family (Endeavour, Manjaro)
  • Gentoo Family (Sabayon, ChromeOS, Mocaccino, Calculate, Redcore)
  • LFS and Homebrew Family (SolusOS, Clear Linux OS)

Then there is the topic of Desktop Environments. We’ve discussed this rather extensively in the past on this show. The major choices are:

  • Gnome or variants, which includes Cinnamon and Budgie, as well as forks of earlier versions such as MATE
  • KDE Plasma, or forks such as Trinity
  • Enlightenment, or forks such as Moksha
  • XFCE
  • LXDE or LXQt
  • Independents such as Deepin, Pantheon, and Lumina

So in terms of complete packages of distros, according to statistics seen by Martin Wimpress, mentioned by Martin Wimpress in the past year or so, but not referenced anywhere public, around 85% of all Linux Desktop users run Ubuntu (Gnome), perhaps 5% run Ubuntu MATE, around 4-5% run Linux Mint, and that leaves 5-6% for everything else. What are the other “everything else”s that I would recommend for new users?

Everyone has an opinion. I’m running 9 different distros across 4 machines, with eight on one machine alone.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to just recommend the main version of Ubuntu or Linux Mint, and you’d be right to do so, but there are others I’d also recommend based on the machine and the user. Right now, my list would include UbuntuDDE Remix, Bodhi Linux, Lubuntu, PCLinuxOS, OpenMandriva, KDE neon, Zorin OS, FerenOS, and PeppermintOS. The first two are the most unusual and forward-looking, and the last three are the easiest to make them look or work the most like Windows 7 or 10. You are of course encouraged to try anything Official or unofficial Ubuntu, including Linux Mint and Pop!_OS. On that list, only OpenMandriva and PCLinuxOS are not Ubuntu-based, and what is missing from that list includes Fedora or OpenSUSE or Arch-based distros.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

CHECK THIS OUT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

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

Get the show time converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4924 mintCast 354.5 – Everyone Has an Opinion https://mintcast.org/mintcast-354-everyone-has-an-opinion/ Tue, 16 Feb 2021 05:45:56 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4921 Then, in the News, a Linux Mint update, Ubuntu loses the lead, Wayland changes, and some new releases
In Security, time to patch… again.
Download
]]> Download

1:30 Linux Innards
33:12 Vibrations from the Ether
51:24 Check This Out
53:45 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, We discuss chromium and how to pick a distro

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

More Chromium Talk – Leo

  • What do we use?
  • Chromium-based? Firefox?
  • The monoculture…

What’s My Distro? – Moss

As I was just pressed into service on this topic yesterday, some early bits of this article were borrowed from or inspired by the article, “What Does The Penguin Say?” on LinuxInsider.com,

So Windows gives you “Windows the Windows Way”, Mac gives you “Mac the Mac Way”, and Linux gives you… everything you ever dreamed of — or your worst nightmares — in a user salad of options.

Just look at the desktop paradigms.

  • Does the desktop try to capture a “traditional” or revolutionary desktop interface paradigm?
  • Does it favor sleekness or no-frills functionality?
  • Do the developers strive for constant evolution or stability and consistency?
  • Are windows, menus, and settings panels minimalist or information-dense?
  • Should users accept the UI as it is, or make it their own?

As founder and co-host of Distrohoppers’ Digest, these and other issues come to the fore. 

  • Which installer does it use, or do they write their own? 
    • Ubiquity – most Ubuntu, Mint
    • Calamares – other Ubuntu, Ubuntu forks, GeckoLinux, and others
    • Anaconda – Fedora
    • Debian-Installer
    • YaST

Now that Ubuntu is setting off writing an all-new installer, this issue is even more timely. How will it be better than Ubiquity? Anyone who has used Calamares has a few answers to that one. But can it be better than Calamares? What about flexibility? Some users of OpenSUSE claim their installer is better than Calamares because it has much more and better options, while others, like me, say those options are not the least understood by most users.

… or does the distro provide a pure image (.img) file, and you have to install GRUB or another bootloader yourself? (EasyOS)

  • Which package manager do they use, or do they write their own?
    • APT with .deb packages (or .rpm packages, in PCLinuxOS)
    • Portage or Entropy
    • URPM, dnf
    • pacman, pamac
    • YUM
    • YaST, zypper
    • eopkg
    • .pup, .snf, you name it

I guess next would be to discuss families, which mostly boils down to:

  • Debian Family
    • Ubuntu sub-family – probably 90-95% of all desktop Linux users
      • Ubuntu
      • Ubuntu wannabes, remixes, respins
      • Linux Mint
      • Indies (Peppermint, FerenOS, Zorin)
    • Independents
  • Slackware Family
    • OpenSUSE variants
  • Red Hat Family
    • Red Hat variants (Fedora, Scientific, CentOS, Rocky, Clear, Oracle)
    • Mandrake variants (PCLinuxOS, Mageia, OpenMandriva, Rosa)
  • Arch Family (Endeavour, Manjaro)
  • Gentoo Family (Sabayon, ChromeOS, Mocaccino, Calculate, Redcore)
  • LFS and Homebrew Family (SolusOS, Clear Linux OS)

Then there is the topic of Desktop Environments. We’ve discussed this rather extensively in the past on this show. The major choices are:

  • Gnome or variants, which includes Cinnamon and Budgie, as well as forks of earlier versions such as MATE
  • KDE Plasma, or forks such as Trinity
  • Enlightenment, or forks such as Moksha
  • XFCE
  • LXDE or LXQt
  • Independents such as Deepin, Pantheon, and Lumina

So in terms of complete packages of distros, according to statistics seen by Martin Wimpress, mentioned by Martin Wimpress in the past year or so, but not referenced anywhere public, around 85% of all Linux Desktop users run Ubuntu (Gnome), perhaps 5% run Ubuntu MATE, around 4-5% run Linux Mint, and that leaves 5-6% for everything else. What are the other “everything else”s that I would recommend for new users?

Everyone has an opinion. I’m running 9 different distros across 4 machines, with eight on one machine alone.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to just recommend the main version of Ubuntu or Linux Mint, and you’d be right to do so, but there are others I’d also recommend based on the machine and the user. Right now, my list would include UbuntuDDE Remix, Bodhi Linux, Lubuntu, PCLinuxOS, OpenMandriva, KDE neon, Zorin OS, FerenOS, and PeppermintOS. The first two are the most unusual and forward-looking, and the last three are the easiest to make them look or work the most like Windows 7 or 10. You are of course encouraged to try anything Official or unofficial Ubuntu, including Linux Mint and Pop!_OS. On that list, only OpenMandriva and PCLinuxOS are not Ubuntu-based, and what is missing from that list includes Fedora or OpenSUSE or Arch-based distros.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

CHECK THIS OUT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

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

Get the show time converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4921 mintCast 353.5 – Well Oiled Machine (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-353-5-well-oiled-machine-mp3/ Wed, 03 Feb 2021 08:51:01 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4902 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:44 Linux Innards
21:01 Vibrations from the Ether
33:46 Check This Out
38:03 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we say how we’ve got on with Linux Mint 20.1 over the past two weeks

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

Linux Mint 20.1 … now that we’ve had time to look at it…

  • Moss
    • My two machines upgraded without an actual hitch, although one of them said something didn’t work. I did a clean install on the Dell laptop. I’ve watched a bit of Hypnotix, with most issues seem to be just what happens on streaming TV. I’ve https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHXt27qpvGUhad a lockup or two though. I tried once to set up a webapp, but didn’t quite understand it and didn’t have enough spoons to read up on it at the time.
  • TonyH
    • So 20.1 has been on my laptop for just over 2 weeks and it is working just fine. Apart from the Hypnotix app and Web Apps, there doesn’t seem to be much difference that impacts my day to day use on the laptop. I do not print or scan from this PC so for the improvements to this I will have to wait to get 20.1 or above on my Tower PC. I’m sure there were lot’s of things done under the hood to make things smoother, such as the improved hardware acceleration in the video playback client Celluloid.
  • JoshH 
    • 20.1 has been really solid for me. I have been using it now since the beta started and even then it was solid just some of the apps they were releasing with 20.1 were a little rough till it went stable. 
  • Joe
    • It has been on my gaming laptop since the last show.  I have not noticed much of a difference between this and the previous version which is good for an incremental update
      • Has not impacted my work which is always a plus
      • Im able to log in and do all my work just like before
    • I have not used hypnotix at all in the 2 weeks since but that is because i have my own already established flow for watching movies and tv shows on my own schedule
    • Web Apps is extremely useful now that i can set it up with chrome and it creates a menu item.  Very simple to get whatsapp running
    • The only other useful things that i have noticed:
      • Menu search is now by relevance which is useful
    • The only real negative that i have seen is that per monitor fractional scaling is not working yet
  • Leo
    • Has been nothing but amazing. As mentioned before, the upgrade went smoothly and without a single hitch.
    • Cinnamon does feel more responsive on the desktop. To my surprise, I still have yet to see a single skipped frame at 144hz.
    • Edited a 2hr show (Linux User Space) in 20.1.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • John Wallis
kernel.modules_disabled (exp: 1)                 [ DIFFERENT ]

https://forums.whonix.org/t/enforce-kernel-module-software-signature-verification-module-signing-disallow-kernel-module-loading-by-default/7880/40

  • John Wallis, part 2

Lynis has marked the following startup services as unsafe:

- networkd-dispatcher.service:                        [ UNSAFE ]

- ondemand.service:                                   [ UNSAFE ]

- osspd.service:                                      [ UNSAFE ]

- plymouth-start.service:                             [ UNSAFE ]

- polkit.service:                                     [ UNSAFE ]

CHECK THIS OUT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4902 mintCast 353.5 – Well Oiled Machine https://mintcast.org/mintcast-353-5-well-oiled-machine/ Wed, 03 Feb 2021 08:44:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4896 And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:44 Linux Innards
21:01 Vibrations from the Ether
33:46 Check This Out
38:03 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we say how we’ve got on with Linux Mint 20.1 over the past two weeks

And finally, the feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

Linux Mint 20.1 … now that we’ve had time to look at it…

  • Moss
    • My two machines upgraded without an actual hitch, although one of them said something didn’t work. I did a clean install on the Dell laptop. I’ve watched a bit of Hypnotix, with most issues seem to be just what happens on streaming TV. I’ve https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHXt27qpvGUhad a lockup or two though. I tried once to set up a webapp, but didn’t quite understand it and didn’t have enough spoons to read up on it at the time.
  • TonyH
    • So 20.1 has been on my laptop for just over 2 weeks and it is working just fine. Apart from the Hypnotix app and Web Apps, there doesn’t seem to be much difference that impacts my day to day use on the laptop. I do not print or scan from this PC so for the improvements to this I will have to wait to get 20.1 or above on my Tower PC. I’m sure there were lot’s of things done under the hood to make things smoother, such as the improved hardware acceleration in the video playback client Celluloid.
  • JoshH 
    • 20.1 has been really solid for me. I have been using it now since the beta started and even then it was solid just some of the apps they were releasing with 20.1 were a little rough till it went stable. 
  • Joe
    • It has been on my gaming laptop since the last show.  I have not noticed much of a difference between this and the previous version which is good for an incremental update
      • Has not impacted my work which is always a plus
      • Im able to log in and do all my work just like before
    • I have not used hypnotix at all in the 2 weeks since but that is because i have my own already established flow for watching movies and tv shows on my own schedule
    • Web Apps is extremely useful now that i can set it up with chrome and it creates a menu item.  Very simple to get whatsapp running
    • The only other useful things that i have noticed:
      • Menu search is now by relevance which is useful
    • The only real negative that i have seen is that per monitor fractional scaling is not working yet
  • Leo
    • Has been nothing but amazing. As mentioned before, the upgrade went smoothly and without a single hitch.
    • Cinnamon does feel more responsive on the desktop. To my surprise, I still have yet to see a single skipped frame at 144hz.
    • Edited a 2hr show (Linux User Space) in 20.1.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • John Wallis
kernel.modules_disabled (exp: 1)                 [ DIFFERENT ]

https://forums.whonix.org/t/enforce-kernel-module-software-signature-verification-module-signing-disallow-kernel-module-loading-by-default/7880/40

  • John Wallis, part 2

Lynis has marked the following startup services as unsafe:

- networkd-dispatcher.service:                        [ UNSAFE ]

- ondemand.service:                                   [ UNSAFE ]

- osspd.service:                                      [ UNSAFE ]

- plymouth-start.service:                             [ UNSAFE ]

- polkit.service:                                     [ UNSAFE ]

CHECK THIS OUT!

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4896 mintCast 352.5 – One Night with Ulyssa (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-352-5-one-night-with-ulyssa-mp3/ Wed, 20 Jan 2021 05:34:14 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4877 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:48 Linux Innards
25:19 Vibrations from the Ether
49:08 Check This Out
1:01:44 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we talk about the first 24 hours with Linux Mint 20.1

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

  • Joe
    • Upgraded my main laptop, the GE72-6QD with nvidia gtx 960m hybrid graphics.  Very smooth update process using the update manager
    • I was pleasantly surprised at the reboot speed.  It was up and running in seconds
    • Hybrid graphics worked perfectly on reboot with no need to fall back to the intel drivers to get things running
    • Everything else seemed very incremental and nothing really stood out to me as new or innovative
    • It just worked and I am happy with the upgrade especially considering that i use this machine on a regular basis for work.
  • Tony
    • So I upgraded my Dell E7440 which is my main portable PC with a 128Gb SSD and 16Gb RAM that has been running Mint 20 since the release last summer.  
    • I think the world and his wife must have been downloading the upgrade because it was a little slow to download all the files about 10-15 minutes, but once downloaded the install was very fast, rebooted and I have a working Mint 20.1 Mate system all ready to go. 
    • I’ve had a little play with Hypnotix and it’s not bad at all, a lot of non english channels but a few that look interesting from the US. Could be a useful tool for people on the road without access to a TV, but a good internet connection, like a road trip with the Kids.
  • Josh
    • Been using Mint 20.1 on my 2010 Macbook Pro and it has been great. The new apps Hypnotix and Web Apps have been really cool! I can’t wait to upgrade my desktop to make full use of them! Oh also easy mute microphone shortcut FTW!
    • I finally got the prompt to upgrade my Linux Mint 20 to 20.1. It worked with no issues at all and I am actually writing this on that desktop! 
    • I got to check out the hypnotix app a bit and it’s really cool. I can get a lot of the channels that I can get on my antenna and more. It’s got a lot of news channels so that is nice including the weather channel. I am going to keep looking into this app for more channels in the future.
    • Web Apps the application that makes websites into somewhat of a native application for linux mint is equally as amazing! I can now have many websites just pinned to my panel to just click and pop open. I love the nice clean look of the “apps” personally.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

CHECK THIS OUT! 

  • Leo
  • Josh H
    • PigZ: (pronounced pig-zee) is a re-implementation of gzip but takes advantage of multithreaded processors. I went from over 1 hour with gzip to under 30 minutes to create a .img.gz backup of my /dev/sda partition. To install pigz on Linux Mint you need to add the universe repository ppa and then “sudo apt install pigz”.
    • Midnight Commander: A terminal based ncurses file manager. It is fully mouse aware and can even change permissions and ownership of files and directories. To install Midnight Commander all you have to do is either go to the mint software manager and look it up or “sudo apt install mc” in the terminal.
  • Joe 
  • Tony

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!>
]]> 4877 mintCast 352.5 – One Night with Ulyssa https://mintcast.org/mintcast-352-5-one-night-with-ulyssa/ Wed, 20 Jan 2021 05:29:08 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4874 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> Download

1:48 Linux Innards
25:19 Vibrations from the Ether
49:08 Check This Out
1:01:44 Announcements & Outro

In our Innards section, we talk about the first 24 hours with Linux Mint 20.1

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

  • Joe
    • Upgraded my main laptop, the GE72-6QD with nvidia gtx 960m hybrid graphics.  Very smooth update process using the update manager
    • I was pleasantly surprised at the reboot speed.  It was up and running in seconds
    • Hybrid graphics worked perfectly on reboot with no need to fall back to the intel drivers to get things running
    • Everything else seemed very incremental and nothing really stood out to me as new or innovative
    • It just worked and I am happy with the upgrade especially considering that i use this machine on a regular basis for work.
  • Tony
    • So I upgraded my Dell E7440 which is my main portable PC with a 128Gb SSD and 16Gb RAM that has been running Mint 20 since the release last summer.  
    • I think the world and his wife must have been downloading the upgrade because it was a little slow to download all the files about 10-15 minutes, but once downloaded the install was very fast, rebooted and I have a working Mint 20.1 Mate system all ready to go. 
    • I’ve had a little play with Hypnotix and it’s not bad at all, a lot of non english channels but a few that look interesting from the US. Could be a useful tool for people on the road without access to a TV, but a good internet connection, like a road trip with the Kids.
  • Josh
    • Been using Mint 20.1 on my 2010 Macbook Pro and it has been great. The new apps Hypnotix and Web Apps have been really cool! I can’t wait to upgrade my desktop to make full use of them! Oh also easy mute microphone shortcut FTW!
    • I finally got the prompt to upgrade my Linux Mint 20 to 20.1. It worked with no issues at all and I am actually writing this on that desktop! 
    • I got to check out the hypnotix app a bit and it’s really cool. I can get a lot of the channels that I can get on my antenna and more. It’s got a lot of news channels so that is nice including the weather channel. I am going to keep looking into this app for more channels in the future.
    • Web Apps the application that makes websites into somewhat of a native application for linux mint is equally as amazing! I can now have many websites just pinned to my panel to just click and pop open. I love the nice clean look of the “apps” personally.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

CHECK THIS OUT! 

  • Leo
  • Josh H
    • PigZ: (pronounced pig-zee) is a re-implementation of gzip but takes advantage of multithreaded processors. I went from over 1 hour with gzip to under 30 minutes to create a .img.gz backup of my /dev/sda partition. To install pigz on Linux Mint you need to add the universe repository ppa and then “sudo apt install pigz”.
    • Midnight Commander: A terminal based ncurses file manager. It is fully mouse aware and can even change permissions and ownership of files and directories. To install Midnight Commander all you have to do is either go to the mint software manager and look it up or “sudo apt install mc” in the terminal.
  • Joe 
  • Tony

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!>
]]> 4874 mintCast 350.5 – Change Your SSID (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-350-5-change-your-ssid-mp3/ Wed, 23 Dec 2020 05:18:28 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4832 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> Download

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

In our Innards section, we talk spooky scary security

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

The Art of Invisibility by Kevin Mitnick

  •  Joe
    • I do like this book.  But it is not about security it is about anonymity and the different things that you have to go through in order to be truly anonymous and the reasoning behind it.  It does get to be what seems a bit extreme but they do discuss the reasoning that you need someone else to purchase the gift cards in order to get the vpn and the bitcoin wallet and the ways of putting more into the wallet anonymously.
    • One of the things that I want to mention is Kevin says in the start of the book “You may not have anything to hide but you do have everything to protect.”
    • Kevin goes into detail about how different people were attached to the identity that they created online and how they were caught also advises how to not make those same mistakes.
    • The most extreme of which is to get someone that is not associated with you to go in and buy a gift card so that you are not on camera buying the card.  Then you use that card to purchase a VPN from a company that does not log and does not require you to identify yourself.  Then you set up a burner machine and never log in from home and you use that burner machine and the VPN in order to set up a bitcoin wallet and then you can either use more gift cards to add to it or you use a cleaning service to get more coins into it so its untraceable where the bitcoins came from.  You can use that to pay any further fees to the VPN and opr purchase items online. You can also use this to do things like publish articles and remain unknown.  But you have to keep switching locations and continue to trust your VPN
    • Also spends some time talking about PGP keys and touts the use of https everywhere which is a good thing to have but most of your modern browsers do that built now anyway
    • Also discusses the various types of tracking that advert agencies and the government do and different ways to subvert that including using a VPN, HTTPS everywhere a non standard DNS and never log in to anything that is attached to your identity if you want to stay anonymous.  Also changing mac addresses every time you log in or every time you change locations so that your fake identity is not attached to a specific machine
  • Tony:
    • Due to my lack of concentration in the last few weeks I’ve not listened to apart from the first chapter, but this alone is enough to make you wary of security issues, and although I never use 12345678 or password, as a password. But I must admit I do need to pay more care in choosing passwords in the future. And I need to consider using a VPN at least when I am doing financial transactions or having a dedicated laptop that is only used for this task.  
  • Leo
    • Things to know
      • You are likely the weakest link.
      • If it’s not you, it’s because you never update
    • The argument “I’m not interesting, they won’t hack me.” misses the point
      • They don’t have to target you. The entire thing is an automated humanless process. If you have lax security practice, you’ll show up vulnerable in a scan, sometimes even on Shodan. Then it’s all downhill from there.
    • Just good, simple wifi recommendations
      • Change your SSID
      • Use WPA2 or 3 if it’s available
      • Change the admin password*
      • Change the admin username*
      • Use long passwords
      • MAC Allow/Deny list
      • Wardriving is rare, not non-existent.
    • Keep it separated
      • If you can, use a device dedicated to banking and health type services. The private ones.
    • HTTPS everywhere
      • Thanks to the EFF you can use this plugin. But with the latest Firefox, you don’t need it.
    • VPN in public
      • Public wifi is never secure. Not ever.
      • VPN to obfuscate your traffic from prying eyes in public. Use a Raspberry Pi to set up OpenVPN manually, or use PiVPN. If you’re adventurous, set up Wireguard.
      • VPN’s for getting special Netflix is something different.
    • Tor isn’t for you
      • But if it is, keep in mind that logging into any service attached to your real name or using your own finances pretty much defeats the purpose.
    • Don’t be the low hanging fruit
      • If it’s easier to hack your neighbor, they will.

Tinfoil hats are for sale in the lobby as you leave the theater…

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Hank Barta by email
  • From Larry Murphy by email
  • Nick (Followup from Last Time) email
  • Wayne (mintcast.org)
  • Aaron (email)

CHECK THIS OUT! 

  • Leo
  • Moss
    • I found my history – BBS The Documentary. It’s 5 hours long, but you’ll never see this stuff elsewhere. I didn’t get into BBSing until 1988, but there are a lot of forgotten things here, including the age when free phone calls were only for your local calling area.
    • Yippy – Privacy-focused search engine, powered by Watson — one click to make it default in Firefox

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4832 mintCast 350.5 – Change Your SSID https://mintcast.org/mintcast-350-5-change-your-ssid/ Wed, 23 Dec 2020 04:56:27 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4827 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]> Download

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

In our Innards section, we talk spooky scary security

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

The Art of Invisibility by Kevin Mitnick

  •  Joe
    • I do like this book.  But it is not about security it is about anonymity and the different things that you have to go through in order to be truly anonymous and the reasoning behind it.  It does get to be what seems a bit extreme but they do discuss the reasoning that you need someone else to purchase the gift cards in order to get the vpn and the bitcoin wallet and the ways of putting more into the wallet anonymously.
    • One of the things that I want to mention is Kevin says in the start of the book “You may not have anything to hide but you do have everything to protect.”
    • Kevin goes into detail about how different people were attached to the identity that they created online and how they were caught also advises how to not make those same mistakes.
    • The most extreme of which is to get someone that is not associated with you to go in and buy a gift card so that you are not on camera buying the card.  Then you use that card to purchase a VPN from a company that does not log and does not require you to identify yourself.  Then you set up a burner machine and never log in from home and you use that burner machine and the VPN in order to set up a bitcoin wallet and then you can either use more gift cards to add to it or you use a cleaning service to get more coins into it so its untraceable where the bitcoins came from.  You can use that to pay any further fees to the VPN and opr purchase items online. You can also use this to do things like publish articles and remain unknown.  But you have to keep switching locations and continue to trust your VPN
    • Also spends some time talking about PGP keys and touts the use of https everywhere which is a good thing to have but most of your modern browsers do that built now anyway
    • Also discusses the various types of tracking that advert agencies and the government do and different ways to subvert that including using a VPN, HTTPS everywhere a non standard DNS and never log in to anything that is attached to your identity if you want to stay anonymous.  Also changing mac addresses every time you log in or every time you change locations so that your fake identity is not attached to a specific machine
  • Tony:
    • Due to my lack of concentration in the last few weeks I’ve not listened to apart from the first chapter, but this alone is enough to make you wary of security issues, and although I never use 12345678 or password, as a password. But I must admit I do need to pay more care in choosing passwords in the future. And I need to consider using a VPN at least when I am doing financial transactions or having a dedicated laptop that is only used for this task.  
  • Leo
    • Things to know
      • You are likely the weakest link.
      • If it’s not you, it’s because you never update
    • The argument “I’m not interesting, they won’t hack me.” misses the point
      • They don’t have to target you. The entire thing is an automated humanless process. If you have lax security practice, you’ll show up vulnerable in a scan, sometimes even on Shodan. Then it’s all downhill from there.
    • Just good, simple wifi recommendations
      • Change your SSID
      • Use WPA2 or 3 if it’s available
      • Change the admin password*
      • Change the admin username*
      • Use long passwords
      • MAC Allow/Deny list
      • Wardriving is rare, not non-existent.
    • Keep it separated
      • If you can, use a device dedicated to banking and health type services. The private ones.
    • HTTPS everywhere
      • Thanks to the EFF you can use this plugin. But with the latest Firefox, you don’t need it.
    • VPN in public
      • Public wifi is never secure. Not ever.
      • VPN to obfuscate your traffic from prying eyes in public. Use a Raspberry Pi to set up OpenVPN manually, or use PiVPN. If you’re adventurous, set up Wireguard.
      • VPN’s for getting special Netflix is something different.
    • Tor isn’t for you
      • But if it is, keep in mind that logging into any service attached to your real name or using your own finances pretty much defeats the purpose.
    • Don’t be the low hanging fruit
      • If it’s easier to hack your neighbor, they will.

Tinfoil hats are for sale in the lobby as you leave the theater…

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Hank Barta by email
  • From Larry Murphy by email
  • Nick (Followup from Last Time) email
  • Wayne (mintcast.org)
  • Aaron (email)

CHECK THIS OUT! 

  • Leo
  • Moss
    • I found my history – BBS The Documentary. It’s 5 hours long, but you’ll never see this stuff elsewhere. I didn’t get into BBSing until 1988, but there are a lot of forgotten things here, including the age when free phone calls were only for your local calling area.
    • Yippy – Privacy-focused search engine, powered by Watson — one click to make it default in Firefox

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4827 mintCast 346.5 – The Midori Story (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-346-5-the-midori-story-mp3/ Wed, 28 Oct 2020 04:05:43 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4730 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

1:30 Linux Innards
24:45 The Feedback
54:09 Check This Out
57:35 Outro

In our Innards section, we talk lesser known browsers

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

Browser Wars: Midori vs. Gnome Web

  • Bad News: Midori implemented the Blink engine in their latest version, and is no longer non-Google
  • Midori
    • Leo
      • From the Linux Mint repo, it works. It’s a solid browser with an ad blocker built in, but can be slow at times, especially when rendering video like webm or mp4.
      • Can be sluggish when rendering lots of javascript like in gmail
      • Javascript in places like Nextcloud, Notes specifically, was odd. The cursor would sometimes be in places I wouldn’t expect. It would clear out after some window resizing, and at that point, would be fantastic.
      • Javascript in places like Reddit was pretty bad. You would really feel it in situations where you were scrolling quickly, but there was lots of dynamic content. Sluggish overall.
      • From the appimage on the site, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a Chromium based browser. Great graphical acceleration, quick rendering, a good overall experience. But of course, it ain’t webkit.
    • Joshua Hawk
      • Midori from the repo (the webkit version) for me was almost totally unusable. I tried for a good 30 minutes to use it but the lagging and stuttering were too much.
      • Midori from the Appimage was great as far as performance goes but the theming for the window borders is from Windows 10. The dev told me I could re-theme is but I could not figure it out. 
  • Web
    • Moss
      • Web installed in Pop!_OS and ran. Installation aborted in Sabayon. Installed correctly in Gecko, but closed immediately upon launch. Installation in OpenMandriva was reported as successful, but I could not find the launcher for it.
      • Themes in Mint and Pop!_OS only included Light and Dark, and Dark did not force darkness on websites. I found several more themes for Web in Bodhi, four light and two dark, including a really nice “Terminal Dark” theme which did a much better job of keeping websites dark.
      • Web claims to be able to import my bookmarks and passwords from Firefox.
        • Bookmarks: Yes, but… It doesn’t import my bookmarks toolbar. Web tries to give me a tiled menu of those most-used, but that’s not the same.
        • Passwords: No. No idea why. That might be actually a protection provided by Firefox. I’m beginning to think it’s time to invest in a password manager.
      • Otherwise, I just can’t find the workflow. Opening and closing tab controls are not obvious. This browser needs a lot of work.
      • Has anyone tried Pale Moon lately? It’s a Firefox fork with a start.me opening page… it is interesting to note that its .deb packages are residing on an openSUSE website…
    • Joe
      • I tested out both of these lightweight browsers and they are lightweight.  
      • This makes them somewhat boring and I can see that they are for specific use cases
      • Either low end machines like the Pi or older hardware
      • Or for people that dont want to use the more mainstream browsers
      • They were both quick and easy to use despite my unfamiliarity but i think that i am just way too far embedded into the chrome echo system
    • Leo
      • The experience was very similar to webkit Midori. Honestly, they didn’t really feel different.
    • Joshua Hawk
      • Gnome Web has been fairly good. Web comes close to midori and firefox on performance but just loses by a hair. The theming is right but the top bar is large. I like a more compact top bar on my windows.
  • Can you use Midori or Gnome Web as your daily driver?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Larry Murphy

106 OSes

https://books.google.com/books?id=lJjuDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=how+to+multiboot+106+OSes&source=bl&ots=eBCi4OQb7M&sig=ACfU3U1VEENP8H0RHyF5FE_VIGUiTneibw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwilrvvg_Z3sAhVFYTUKHVLcBRc4ChDoATABegQICBAC

  • John Wallis
  • Erik Lietz
  • Hilander

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/creeped-out-schools-turn-to-technology-in-pandemic-to-catch-online-cheaters-1.5141633

https://london.ctvnews.ca/software-used-by-universities-to-prevent-cheating-suffers-security-breach-closes-down-during-exams-1.5148790

  • Brad Alexander

Hey guys,

First, I wanted to circle back around on a couple of things. Joe, my HBS920s gave up the ghost. I woke up this morning and pulled them off the charger, and it had split on one of the joints closest to the back of the neckband (I can send you a picture if you like)…So I have my eye on a set of HBS910s on ebay. There is also a crack running along the top neckband from where it split toward the earpiece. I can send you pics if you are interested…

Second item…Leo, Do you only use your NAS for backups? That is the one thing that I don’t use my NAS for. Currently, I use it for storage, my video and music assets are all on it, all of my movies and TV shows, as well as my mp3 collection. Plus my ebook library, various forms, and other stuff, paperwork, forms, etc.

So what do I do for backups? I have several levels of backups. First, on my FreeBSD boxes, I do ZFS snapshots. I have the following set up:

  • 1 snapshot every 15 minutes
  • 24 hourlies
  • 7 dailies
  • 4 weeklies
  • 12 monthlies

Then I also run a server in the rack in the basement, on which I run backuppc, that backs up all of the systems on my network. If you haven’t played with backuppc, you should. It is perl based, agentless, and backs up using tar, rsync, or smb (on a per-host basis). It is very space efficient and does deduplication:

There are 11 hosts that have been backed up, for a total of:

  • 31 full backups of total size 870.28GB (prior to pooling and compression),
  • 48 incr backups of total size 216.80GB (prior to pooling and compression).

Finally, things which are critical, like backups of tax returns, family pictures and stuff which I need to keep offsite, I use the Tarsnap site for backups. Tarsnap was written by Colin Percival, who was the FreeBSD security officer. I can store what I need to (several gigs) in tarsnap, and $20 will last me for a year or more. Check it out. It is an amazing application. And since it works pretty much like tar, it is pretty straightforward to use.

Now on to new business. My home office. I consider myself lucky, because I think I was prescient wrd the setup of my home office. We built this house 19 years ago, and when we did, I told the builder to take the formal living room, close off the door to the diinig room, and we made this the office. I ran 500′ cat5e (remember, it was 2001) all over the house, including the office. I had him run a separate circuit to this room and the basement, where I have a 42U data center rack so the computers are isolated. I bought a corner desk, and my wife has an L desk. The other thing for me is that we are empty nesters, our kids have all moved out. So when covid hit, and they said work from home, I was like “yes, please!” Instead of a 100 mile round trip commute and 3-4 hours a day in the car, I get up, pull on sweatpants, make the 20′ commute to the office, fire up the VPN, and go into the kitchen looking for coffee. So what does my hardware look like? I have commie-cast for internet. From the cable modem, it goes into my pfSense firewall. From there to a TPLink 24 port GigE switch.

My workstation has my personal laptop (left), a Thinkpad W520 running FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE, my desktop (center) which is a homebuilt box with a Core 17-6850K, 16GB of RAM, and an nVidia GTX780Ti driving a 26″ acer IPS display for video, also running FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE, My work laptop (right) is a Dell Latitude running Devuan Linux (no systemd!). I inherited a 34″ 21:9 ultrawide monitor from my son-in-law when he decided to get a 55″ 4ktv for his monitor. I used to have a 24′ monitor and the laptop display, which I was having a problem seeing the tiny fonts, but I like my screen real estate.

We use ms teams at work, so for audio, I use my iphone and LG HBS810. For audio on the desktop, I have a set of Sennheiser wireless headphones.

Anyway, that’s how I roll. Hopefully I won’t ever have to go back on a daily basis.

Joe Boylan

Wow that is a lot of computer equipment at the house.  Would love to talk some more about it on the show, if we can convince the rest of the team.

as to the lgs, yeah once they start cracking there isn’t anything that you can do except strip them for parts and move on.

I have the sennheiser Urbanite XL’s, they were originally a fairly expensive headset with decent sound quality and a nice feel.  I hate them.  The touch controls are an interesting idea but it is in a position such that it is very easy to set off accidently with your shoulder or when adjusting the fit.

Brad Alexander

Heck, that is just in the office. Downstairs, I have a data center rack, and it contains

* a Dell PE1950 that runs proxmox-ve, and my openvz containers (an ancient version that I am working on retiring). Eventually it will be a FreeBSD machine for hosting jails.

* a Dell PE1850 on which I run backuppc. This will be retired and donated to my church soon. I will run backuppc in a jail on my FreeNAS eventually.

On the bottom shelf, the small box is my HP T610 that is my pfSense box, and the tower case on the right is my FreeNAS, 6 3TB drives, in a RAID-Z2. The reason for this is that over the years, I have done a lot of training on my home systems. As a sysadmin, setting up and maintaining various boxes and tools, as a security engineer, being able to hack on things, and as a devops guy (which I’m really not), teaching myself stuff like puppet and ansible and satstack.

as to the lgs, yeah once they start cracking there isn’t anything that you can do except strip them for parts and move on.

Anything I can salvage other than the rubber earbuds and the mesh caps for the earpieces? I’m just hoping these HBS910s I bought are worth it. IMHO, that was the pinnacle of the HBS line. I almost bought a set of LG Tone HBS-SL5, but I saw enough 1-, 2-, and 3-star reviews that said the usual about more recent LG headsets (e.g. poor microphone quality, and abyssmal customer service, and poor build quality). So I’ll try the 910s and if they don’t work, I’ll try the SL5s.

I have the sennheiser Urbanite XL’s, they were originally a fairly expensive headset with decent sound quality and a nice feel.  I hate them.  The touch controls are an interesting idea but it is in a position such that it is very easy to set off accidently with your shoulder or when adjusting the fit.

I love Sennheiser earphones in general, but would never have an over-the-ear headset. In fact, I think it is illegal to wear headphones while driving. I have had the HDR130 headphones for many years, and I still love them. They are pure wireless, 900MHz, I believe. Like Bo said, I can walk around the house with them on.

Thanks,

–b

Brad Alexander

Forgot to include the rack picture…

Joe Boylan

Once again I say we should have you on the show to discuss your setup.  Now just gotta convince everyone else.  

the salvageable parts on a pair of lgs with a cracked frame: 

The battery– even if it is not the same size as the next headphones they will be the same voltage so they are reusable so as they are bloated or non recoverable dead

The Buds wire and reel assembly of a retractable if using another of the same model– in most cases it does have to be the same model in order to go into the next model but this is not always the case and when setting up a different retractable if one side goes out it is better to replace the whole assembly if you cant save the whole assembly or dont want to the thin wire is really good for projects

The buttons and sliders– Always good to have extras if you work on a lot of headsets because they are easy to lose and needed for functionality

Same goes for the tiny screws which are useful in many projects 

Yeah I usually only use over ear headsets at the house although I do like to take a pair to work to let people know that I really don’t want to talk to them today.  its also a good way to avoid conversations at the gym but it does somewhat limit the exercises that you can do

Brad Alexander

I’m not sure that Leo is going to want me gushing and squeeing and fanboying over FreeBSD and ZFS on a Linux Mint podcast. 😀

I’ll save the parts you suggested, tough I don’t work on headsets ever. If nothing else, I could send you the parts I recover… I don’t have two of the same set. I have an HBS-700, an HBS-730, the 810 I mentioned, and the now-dead 920s. I ordered a set of 910s, those being sort of the pinnacle of the HBS line.

Having said that, have you heard anything about any of the newer ones like the newer ones like the HBS-SL5s with the “Meridian” audio? I think it is the next in the downhill slide of the LG headsets, judging from the amazon reviews.

I use my HBS phones at work, because I also use them as hearing protection at the range, and I use a set of over-the-ear for exactly the same reason as you do. Those are my do not disturb headphones. 🙂

Thanks,

–b

Joe Boylan

I like the 770s because they are the easiest to work on and have a better mic than the 780s.  The 810s are pretty cool and the retractables are easy to replace but you essentially have to replace it with the same model earbud from the same side on another headset.  It gets worse as you move down the tree to the later ones having to replace the entire lower assembly.  LG has almost always had quality issues(other than a really good mic) in that the cables on the earbuds are really thin and really cheap and prone to breaking either at the earbud or where the bud goes into the casing.  That is why my first fixes were always shortening the cable on one side to get rid of the break.  I was doing it every 6 months or so, which is why even running several of them in rotation I would occasionally have to get a new set because the cables were getting too short.  I think i have 20 working ones right now but i am only using the 5 that i modded with all new cables and connectors, only one of which currently has a side out and needs to be repaired.

I do plan on trying a couple of different variations of the mods in the future but i have kind of dialed back about talking about it on the show because i don’t really think people like hearing about it as much as i like talking about it. 

Brad Alexander

I like the retractibles because I don’t like the loose cable tickling my neck, especially under a collared shirt. So the first retractibles I got were a set of 912s (I believe those were 910s rebranded for Costco).They went out (I don’t even remember why/how), and I was able to return them. Then I picked up the 920s, but people couldn’t hear me on them for phone calls. So I bought the 810s…The audio isn’t as good, but at least people can hear me on calls.

Joe Boylan

i wonder if you can move the mic from the 810 to the 920

Brad Alexander

Nothing I would want to try. Like the respondent in your last mail section, it’s been too long for me with a soldering iron…

CHECK THIS OUT:

  • Moss – We talked about this earlier, but just had to say, if you’re using Gnome 3, you could be using Pop Shell. It’s an easy install and brings some cool features to Gnome including something similar to i3wm usability. 
  • Joe

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be Sunday, November 1, 2020 at 2 pm US Central Standard Time, 8 pm UTC. Check when this will be in your local timezone at https://everytimezone.com/s/7d8c1119.
  • Note both the US and UK will have time changes (“fall back” 1 hour) between mintCasts 346 & 347, so those times remain the same, but this makes the UTC time 1 hour later than before.

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!>
]]> 4730 mintCast 346.5 – The Midori Story https://mintcast.org/mintcast-346-5-the-midori-story/ Wed, 28 Oct 2020 03:50:39 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4724 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

1:30 Linux Innards
24:45 The Feedback
54:09 Check This Out
57:35 Outro

In our Innards section, we talk lesser known browsers

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

Browser Wars: Midori vs. Gnome Web

  • Bad News: Midori implemented the Blink engine in their latest version, and is no longer non-Google
  • Midori
    • Leo
      • From the Linux Mint repo, it works. It’s a solid browser with an ad blocker built in, but can be slow at times, especially when rendering video like webm or mp4.
      • Can be sluggish when rendering lots of javascript like in gmail
      • Javascript in places like Nextcloud, Notes specifically, was odd. The cursor would sometimes be in places I wouldn’t expect. It would clear out after some window resizing, and at that point, would be fantastic.
      • Javascript in places like Reddit was pretty bad. You would really feel it in situations where you were scrolling quickly, but there was lots of dynamic content. Sluggish overall.
      • From the appimage on the site, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a Chromium based browser. Great graphical acceleration, quick rendering, a good overall experience. But of course, it ain’t webkit.
    • Joshua Hawk
      • Midori from the repo (the webkit version) for me was almost totally unusable. I tried for a good 30 minutes to use it but the lagging and stuttering were too much.
      • Midori from the Appimage was great as far as performance goes but the theming for the window borders is from Windows 10. The dev told me I could re-theme is but I could not figure it out. 
  • Web
    • Moss
      • Web installed in Pop!_OS and ran. Installation aborted in Sabayon. Installed correctly in Gecko, but closed immediately upon launch. Installation in OpenMandriva was reported as successful, but I could not find the launcher for it.
      • Themes in Mint and Pop!_OS only included Light and Dark, and Dark did not force darkness on websites. I found several more themes for Web in Bodhi, four light and two dark, including a really nice “Terminal Dark” theme which did a much better job of keeping websites dark.
      • Web claims to be able to import my bookmarks and passwords from Firefox.
        • Bookmarks: Yes, but… It doesn’t import my bookmarks toolbar. Web tries to give me a tiled menu of those most-used, but that’s not the same.
        • Passwords: No. No idea why. That might be actually a protection provided by Firefox. I’m beginning to think it’s time to invest in a password manager.
      • Otherwise, I just can’t find the workflow. Opening and closing tab controls are not obvious. This browser needs a lot of work.
      • Has anyone tried Pale Moon lately? It’s a Firefox fork with a start.me opening page… it is interesting to note that its .deb packages are residing on an openSUSE website…
    • Joe
      • I tested out both of these lightweight browsers and they are lightweight.  
      • This makes them somewhat boring and I can see that they are for specific use cases
      • Either low end machines like the Pi or older hardware
      • Or for people that dont want to use the more mainstream browsers
      • They were both quick and easy to use despite my unfamiliarity but i think that i am just way too far embedded into the chrome echo system
    • Leo
      • The experience was very similar to webkit Midori. Honestly, they didn’t really feel different.
    • Joshua Hawk
      • Gnome Web has been fairly good. Web comes close to midori and firefox on performance but just loses by a hair. The theming is right but the top bar is large. I like a more compact top bar on my windows.
  • Can you use Midori or Gnome Web as your daily driver?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Larry Murphy

106 OSes

https://books.google.com/books?id=lJjuDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=how+to+multiboot+106+OSes&source=bl&ots=eBCi4OQb7M&sig=ACfU3U1VEENP8H0RHyF5FE_VIGUiTneibw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwilrvvg_Z3sAhVFYTUKHVLcBRc4ChDoATABegQICBAC

  • John Wallis
  • Erik Lietz
  • Hilander

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/creeped-out-schools-turn-to-technology-in-pandemic-to-catch-online-cheaters-1.5141633

https://london.ctvnews.ca/software-used-by-universities-to-prevent-cheating-suffers-security-breach-closes-down-during-exams-1.5148790

  • Brad Alexander

Hey guys,

First, I wanted to circle back around on a couple of things. Joe, my HBS920s gave up the ghost. I woke up this morning and pulled them off the charger, and it had split on one of the joints closest to the back of the neckband (I can send you a picture if you like)…So I have my eye on a set of HBS910s on ebay. There is also a crack running along the top neckband from where it split toward the earpiece. I can send you pics if you are interested…

Second item…Leo, Do you only use your NAS for backups? That is the one thing that I don’t use my NAS for. Currently, I use it for storage, my video and music assets are all on it, all of my movies and TV shows, as well as my mp3 collection. Plus my ebook library, various forms, and other stuff, paperwork, forms, etc.

So what do I do for backups? I have several levels of backups. First, on my FreeBSD boxes, I do ZFS snapshots. I have the following set up:

  • 1 snapshot every 15 minutes
  • 24 hourlies
  • 7 dailies
  • 4 weeklies
  • 12 monthlies

Then I also run a server in the rack in the basement, on which I run backuppc, that backs up all of the systems on my network. If you haven’t played with backuppc, you should. It is perl based, agentless, and backs up using tar, rsync, or smb (on a per-host basis). It is very space efficient and does deduplication:

There are 11 hosts that have been backed up, for a total of:

  • 31 full backups of total size 870.28GB (prior to pooling and compression),
  • 48 incr backups of total size 216.80GB (prior to pooling and compression).

Finally, things which are critical, like backups of tax returns, family pictures and stuff which I need to keep offsite, I use the Tarsnap site for backups. Tarsnap was written by Colin Percival, who was the FreeBSD security officer. I can store what I need to (several gigs) in tarsnap, and $20 will last me for a year or more. Check it out. It is an amazing application. And since it works pretty much like tar, it is pretty straightforward to use.

Now on to new business. My home office. I consider myself lucky, because I think I was prescient wrd the setup of my home office. We built this house 19 years ago, and when we did, I told the builder to take the formal living room, close off the door to the diinig room, and we made this the office. I ran 500′ cat5e (remember, it was 2001) all over the house, including the office. I had him run a separate circuit to this room and the basement, where I have a 42U data center rack so the computers are isolated. I bought a corner desk, and my wife has an L desk. The other thing for me is that we are empty nesters, our kids have all moved out. So when covid hit, and they said work from home, I was like “yes, please!” Instead of a 100 mile round trip commute and 3-4 hours a day in the car, I get up, pull on sweatpants, make the 20′ commute to the office, fire up the VPN, and go into the kitchen looking for coffee. So what does my hardware look like? I have commie-cast for internet. From the cable modem, it goes into my pfSense firewall. From there to a TPLink 24 port GigE switch.

My workstation has my personal laptop (left), a Thinkpad W520 running FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE, my desktop (center) which is a homebuilt box with a Core 17-6850K, 16GB of RAM, and an nVidia GTX780Ti driving a 26″ acer IPS display for video, also running FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE, My work laptop (right) is a Dell Latitude running Devuan Linux (no systemd!). I inherited a 34″ 21:9 ultrawide monitor from my son-in-law when he decided to get a 55″ 4ktv for his monitor. I used to have a 24′ monitor and the laptop display, which I was having a problem seeing the tiny fonts, but I like my screen real estate.

We use ms teams at work, so for audio, I use my iphone and LG HBS810. For audio on the desktop, I have a set of Sennheiser wireless headphones.

Anyway, that’s how I roll. Hopefully I won’t ever have to go back on a daily basis.

Joe Boylan

Wow that is a lot of computer equipment at the house.  Would love to talk some more about it on the show, if we can convince the rest of the team.

as to the lgs, yeah once they start cracking there isn’t anything that you can do except strip them for parts and move on.

I have the sennheiser Urbanite XL’s, they were originally a fairly expensive headset with decent sound quality and a nice feel.  I hate them.  The touch controls are an interesting idea but it is in a position such that it is very easy to set off accidently with your shoulder or when adjusting the fit.

Brad Alexander

Heck, that is just in the office. Downstairs, I have a data center rack, and it contains

* a Dell PE1950 that runs proxmox-ve, and my openvz containers (an ancient version that I am working on retiring). Eventually it will be a FreeBSD machine for hosting jails.

* a Dell PE1850 on which I run backuppc. This will be retired and donated to my church soon. I will run backuppc in a jail on my FreeNAS eventually.

On the bottom shelf, the small box is my HP T610 that is my pfSense box, and the tower case on the right is my FreeNAS, 6 3TB drives, in a RAID-Z2. The reason for this is that over the years, I have done a lot of training on my home systems. As a sysadmin, setting up and maintaining various boxes and tools, as a security engineer, being able to hack on things, and as a devops guy (which I’m really not), teaching myself stuff like puppet and ansible and satstack.

as to the lgs, yeah once they start cracking there isn’t anything that you can do except strip them for parts and move on.

Anything I can salvage other than the rubber earbuds and the mesh caps for the earpieces? I’m just hoping these HBS910s I bought are worth it. IMHO, that was the pinnacle of the HBS line. I almost bought a set of LG Tone HBS-SL5, but I saw enough 1-, 2-, and 3-star reviews that said the usual about more recent LG headsets (e.g. poor microphone quality, and abyssmal customer service, and poor build quality). So I’ll try the 910s and if they don’t work, I’ll try the SL5s.

I have the sennheiser Urbanite XL’s, they were originally a fairly expensive headset with decent sound quality and a nice feel.  I hate them.  The touch controls are an interesting idea but it is in a position such that it is very easy to set off accidently with your shoulder or when adjusting the fit.

I love Sennheiser earphones in general, but would never have an over-the-ear headset. In fact, I think it is illegal to wear headphones while driving. I have had the HDR130 headphones for many years, and I still love them. They are pure wireless, 900MHz, I believe. Like Bo said, I can walk around the house with them on.

Thanks,

–b

Brad Alexander

Forgot to include the rack picture…

Joe Boylan

Once again I say we should have you on the show to discuss your setup.  Now just gotta convince everyone else.  

the salvageable parts on a pair of lgs with a cracked frame: 

The battery– even if it is not the same size as the next headphones they will be the same voltage so they are reusable so as they are bloated or non recoverable dead

The Buds wire and reel assembly of a retractable if using another of the same model– in most cases it does have to be the same model in order to go into the next model but this is not always the case and when setting up a different retractable if one side goes out it is better to replace the whole assembly if you cant save the whole assembly or dont want to the thin wire is really good for projects

The buttons and sliders– Always good to have extras if you work on a lot of headsets because they are easy to lose and needed for functionality

Same goes for the tiny screws which are useful in many projects 

Yeah I usually only use over ear headsets at the house although I do like to take a pair to work to let people know that I really don’t want to talk to them today.  its also a good way to avoid conversations at the gym but it does somewhat limit the exercises that you can do

Brad Alexander

I’m not sure that Leo is going to want me gushing and squeeing and fanboying over FreeBSD and ZFS on a Linux Mint podcast. 😀

I’ll save the parts you suggested, tough I don’t work on headsets ever. If nothing else, I could send you the parts I recover… I don’t have two of the same set. I have an HBS-700, an HBS-730, the 810 I mentioned, and the now-dead 920s. I ordered a set of 910s, those being sort of the pinnacle of the HBS line.

Having said that, have you heard anything about any of the newer ones like the newer ones like the HBS-SL5s with the “Meridian” audio? I think it is the next in the downhill slide of the LG headsets, judging from the amazon reviews.

I use my HBS phones at work, because I also use them as hearing protection at the range, and I use a set of over-the-ear for exactly the same reason as you do. Those are my do not disturb headphones. 🙂

Thanks,

–b

Joe Boylan

I like the 770s because they are the easiest to work on and have a better mic than the 780s.  The 810s are pretty cool and the retractables are easy to replace but you essentially have to replace it with the same model earbud from the same side on another headset.  It gets worse as you move down the tree to the later ones having to replace the entire lower assembly.  LG has almost always had quality issues(other than a really good mic) in that the cables on the earbuds are really thin and really cheap and prone to breaking either at the earbud or where the bud goes into the casing.  That is why my first fixes were always shortening the cable on one side to get rid of the break.  I was doing it every 6 months or so, which is why even running several of them in rotation I would occasionally have to get a new set because the cables were getting too short.  I think i have 20 working ones right now but i am only using the 5 that i modded with all new cables and connectors, only one of which currently has a side out and needs to be repaired.

I do plan on trying a couple of different variations of the mods in the future but i have kind of dialed back about talking about it on the show because i don’t really think people like hearing about it as much as i like talking about it. 

Brad Alexander

I like the retractibles because I don’t like the loose cable tickling my neck, especially under a collared shirt. So the first retractibles I got were a set of 912s (I believe those were 910s rebranded for Costco).They went out (I don’t even remember why/how), and I was able to return them. Then I picked up the 920s, but people couldn’t hear me on them for phone calls. So I bought the 810s…The audio isn’t as good, but at least people can hear me on calls.

Joe Boylan

i wonder if you can move the mic from the 810 to the 920

Brad Alexander

Nothing I would want to try. Like the respondent in your last mail section, it’s been too long for me with a soldering iron…

CHECK THIS OUT:

  • Moss – We talked about this earlier, but just had to say, if you’re using Gnome 3, you could be using Pop Shell. It’s an easy install and brings some cool features to Gnome including something similar to i3wm usability. 
  • Joe

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be Sunday, November 1, 2020 at 2 pm US Central Standard Time, 8 pm UTC. Check when this will be in your local timezone at https://everytimezone.com/s/7d8c1119.
  • Note both the US and UK will have time changes (“fall back” 1 hour) between mintCasts 346 & 347, so those times remain the same, but this makes the UTC time 1 hour later than before.

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!>
]]> 4724 mintCast 345.5 – Linux on the Edge (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-345-5-linux-on-the-edge-mp3/ Wed, 14 Oct 2020 04:44:33 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4704 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

1:31 Linux Innards
41:23 Vibrations from the Ether
1:02:31 Check This Out
1:05:07 Outro

In our Innards section, we Introduce Josh Hawk and pick his and all of our brains.

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

  • To Josh: Do you think insistence on FOSS is holding back Linux adoption?
  • To All: Do you think Windows will ever be Linux based?
  • To All: Who is using Edge for Linux when it drops? Sometime later?
  • To All: Given the above, should we be concentrating on what we can do on Linux, rather than Linux distributions when promoting it to the non-Linux-using public. This comes from a recent interview with Stuart Langridge of ‘Bad Voltage’ on ‘Linux User Space’ 

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Reci Fluência
  • TBA
  • Dylan B
  • Henrik Hemrin
  • @casulemarc (twitter)

https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface

  • fjord

CHECK THIS OUT:

  • Moss
    • Amazon Echo add-on Hey Samuel! – Samuel L. Jackson
      • 1st gen Echos can only use “[LadyTube], Ask Samuel to…”
    • Ting has added Verizon to their existing Sprint and T-Mobile lines. If you were not signing up for Ting because you needed Verizon coverage, you can do it now.
      • Ting’s subscriber rolls were enumerated as fewer than 300,000 customers
      • On the other hand, Ting (along with Boost and TracFone) has been bought by Dish Network, which eventually wants to roll out their own cellular brand. Ting claims their plans will not change.
  • Joe

Announcements:

Our next show will be on October 18, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC. Check https://everytimezone.com/s/a5d26573  to convert to your local time.

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!>
]]> 4704 mintCast 345.5 – Linux on the Edge https://mintcast.org/mintcast-345-5-linux-on-the-edge/ Wed, 14 Oct 2020 04:22:34 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4697 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

1:31 Linux Innards
41:23 Vibrations from the Ether
1:02:31 Check This Out
1:05:07 Outro

In our Innards section, we Introduce Josh Hawk and pick his and all of our brains.

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS:

  • To Josh: Do you think insistence on FOSS is holding back Linux adoption?
  • To All: Do you think Windows will ever be Linux based?
  • To All: Who is using Edge for Linux when it drops? Sometime later?
  • To All: Given the above, should we be concentrating on what we can do on Linux, rather than Linux distributions when promoting it to the non-Linux-using public. This comes from a recent interview with Stuart Langridge of ‘Bad Voltage’ on ‘Linux User Space’ 

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Reci Fluência
  • TBA
  • Dylan B
  • Henrik Hemrin
  • @casulemarc (twitter)

https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface

  • fjord

CHECK THIS OUT:

  • Moss
    • Amazon Echo add-on Hey Samuel! – Samuel L. Jackson
      • 1st gen Echos can only use “[LadyTube], Ask Samuel to…”
    • Ting has added Verizon to their existing Sprint and T-Mobile lines. If you were not signing up for Ting because you needed Verizon coverage, you can do it now.
      • Ting’s subscriber rolls were enumerated as fewer than 300,000 customers
      • On the other hand, Ting (along with Boost and TracFone) has been bought by Dish Network, which eventually wants to roll out their own cellular brand. Ting claims their plans will not change.
  • Joe

Announcements:

Our next show will be on October 18, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC. Check https://everytimezone.com/s/a5d26573  to convert to your local time.

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!>
]]> 4697 mintCast 344.5 – “Working” from Home (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-344-5-working-from-home-mp3/ Wed, 30 Sep 2020 04:05:44 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4683 And finally, the feedback
Download
]]>

Download

1:38 Linux Innards
58:33 Vibrations from the Ether
1:17:19 Check This Out!
1:20:44 Outro

In our Innards section, we go over the working from home slash home-office setups we have.

And finally, the feedback

LINUX INNARDS:

“Work from Home” setup

  • Tony
    • My views of last time’s topic on Proprietary software v Open Source holding Linux back.
    • For me I’m very pragmatic about using what works, my first preference is Opensource but if there is a proprietary bit of software that would offer a better solution I would use it, and I do as I install the Nvidia drivers on my desktop PC as I have a dedicated Nvidia graphics card.
    • As for the availability of proprietary software for Linux such as Photoshop I’m not sure this is a major issue as this is a very niche package and a very small possible Linux user base making it uneconomic for Adobe to spend time creating a Linux version. Looking at industry leading software one example of Open Source leading the way is Blender, and again very few regular Linux users would even look at this let alone use it too it’s full potential, those that need this software for professional 3D rendering are already using it and probably on Linux.
  • Leo
  • Joe
    • MSI ge72 6qd with an i7-6700HQ and a gtx 960m
    • That has a 17 inch screen
    • For the second screen i have a laptop table with a 32 inch tv on it
    • The table also has a mount for my 7130 so i can do other small things when work is slow or i need to look something up
    • The table that my laptop sits on has an articulated arm for my microphone which is right now a hyperx quadcast or a samson meteor
    • Also use my Samsung Galaxy note 10 all day every day with several of my custom built lg hbs 770 headphones along with a pair of skullcandy crushers if i want to listen to music and a modded pair of sony xb700s for when i can no longer stand the idea of using an in ear but want all day wear and a pair of 99 neos for when it has to be wired
    • Because i rely so heavily on my phone to be able to do my work i also keep my old galaxy s7 around incase something happens to the note
    • Extra wide recliner that is seeing a lot of wear and tear lately
    • Logitech k360 keyboard and m570 trackball mouse
    • ASUS AC2900 router
      • Need to be able to handle all my work stuff and all the kids school stuff
      • 300mbps connection from spectrum
    • My backup workstation in the garage
      • Ryzen 5 3600 16gb of ram rx 560
      • Two lg tvs as monitors
        • One 60 inch that i got for free because of a bad hdmi board
        • One 43 inch that i also got for free because my friend closed out his storage unit
      • Logitech g613 keyboard and m570 mouse
  • Tony H
    • So even though I am no longer working I do obviously use my PC for quite a lot of tasks as well as numerous laptops my main PC is my tower, and this is what I use for podcasting and much more.
    • So my Desktop PC setup is an:
      • HP Compaq Elite 8300 with the following specs:
        • A 2012 Intel® Core™ i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz with 4 cores and 8 threads.
        • 24Gig of DDR3 Ram
        • NVIDIA GeForce 8400 256Mb Ram
        • Generic USB keyboard and mouse
        • And a 1Tb SSD in the primary Bay of my 4 bay IcyDoc. Running Mint Maté 19.3. There are an additional 2 128Gb drives in the dock with Ubuntu Studio 20.04 and Ubuntu Maté 20.04 installed. The 4th bay is not populated because for some reason it does not recognise any drives installed despite all the cables being connected??
    • I have a ProSound USB podcast mic, that I picked up in a bankruptcy sale a few years ago for a very reasonable £12/$15 and this is mounted onto a boom arm and has a pop filter in front of the mic.
    • I also have a SriHome USB webcam that I got a couple of months ago once I could find one that would not mean remortgaging the house. This cost £31 pounds on Amazon.
    • I have 2 4TB USB3 external backup drives with plenty of room for more data at the moment, Both have 1.9Tb of free space, I should have of site backup as well but at the moment I don’t. I also have a 2TB and 1Tb portable USB3 drive for storage on the go.
    • I have 2 Laser printers, a Greyscale Brother and a recently purchased HP Color Laser 150nw, bought for printing my own decals for my models, this cost £130 of Amazon but as buying decals from online sellers can be £2-3 a set this will quickly pay for itself in the next few months. Yes Decal paper is about £1/sheet but you can print many decals on one A4 sheet so the paper is hardly a factor in the decal cost.
  • Bo
    • Work setup
      • Lenovo laptop and docking station at work
      • KVM switch at home
    • Podcasting
      • System76 Kudu
      • Zoom H6 USB interface
    • Gaming
      • Ryzen 7 build
      • Dual Booting win and Linux
  • Tony W

Will talk about my basement office/studio setup

    • 2 desks, catty corner
      • One desk holds both my podcasting/music desktop as well as my work laptop setup
      • Other desk has my server on it and also use for working on any other machines
    • Network
      • Ran wired internet into basement
    • Repurposed wifi extender as access point with DD WRT
    • Work Setup
      • Thinkpad T480
      • Thinkpad dock
      • Lenovo wireless keyboard/mouse
      • Plantronics Savi w720
    • Music/Podcasting setup – Sentimental value and stories with a lot of this gear
      • Share peripherals w/ work setup
      • Old Dell desktop
        • Video card for multiple monitor support
      • M-Audio Delta 66 soundcard (have a presonus studio 24c)
      • Behringer XM1800S microphone (I have a MXL V57M will use at some point)
      • Neewer desk mount boom arm
      • Audio-Technica M50x headphones
      • Dual monitor “Goodwill Edition” setup (sometimes use a 3rd monitor)
      • JVC stereo R-K11
      • Bose bookshelf speakers
    • Tablet
    • PC in living room: Lenovo desktop (unsure of model right now, has 4th gen i3 in it, 8GB RAM)
      • Dual boot, mostly used in Windows these days by my son for homework
      • Linux mint partition

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Larry Murphy

Hello Leo & All,

I just hear episode 342.5. I wanted to let you know that way back when (early to mid 2000’s) when I wanted to multi-boot I found a You Tube that was a step-by step guide. The person had 106 OSes on his computer. The guide was very complete. I modified it for my needs. It worked for about 6 mos. Till it wouldn’t boot. Checking I found out that my downfall was updating the config files. I accepted one that was a default with the system upgrade and I needed to save the one I had filled out. It was a real nooby error.

Now I boot ALL my OSes from my bios, much easier and safer. I use a SSD for each OS, such as Windows and Linux. I only put OSes on SSD,s and data on separate internal and external drives.

I have found that Linux is quicker to install and even with ALL the customizing I do. I customize many of my folder and almost all of my desk top icons for easy identification. I have use the same icon in both Windows and Linux. I find it,s much easier in Linux because I don’t have change the pics I use to .ico files as is needed by Windows. I also find that my internet is faster in Linux as well as download speeds and I can burn dvds faster in Linux as well. I didn’t want you to think setting up multi-boot my my own. I wanted to do it just to see if I could. I always customize my Windows installs but the Linux installs are MUCH easier to do and as always I always enjoy listening to each one of you folks on the show. Thanks for the great content and all your hard work that goes into each show.

  • John Wallis

Hello Leo,

I would appreciate your assistance please with the error messages arising in the attached screenshot at boot stage, before and after the hard disk encryption password is entered. I look forward to hearing from you.

Try This GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash pci=noacpi”
  • John Wallis Part 2

Hi Leo,

I would appreciate your guidance on systemd-udevd.service. What is it used for? Lynis has marked it as unsafe.

  • Raphaël

You guys MADE MY DAY!!!

I was having a long day at work on Thursday. Then, listening to my podcasts, the Linux Mint Podcast was on… and then the listeners questions section was like… all about me 🙂 Sorry if I made this episode longer than you like 😉

This was a great joy to hear you talking about this question. I immediately felt the need to give back to you. I’ve made a donation to archive.org on your behalf!

As for the solutions proposed:

– I just downloaded the LM20 ISO and plan on installing it soon

– I’ve tried “sudo flatpak install org.videolan.VLC” and got the error message “error: REMOTE and REF must be specified”. The correct invocation (source) is “flatpak install flathub org.videolan.VLC” (+ no sudo needed). It seems to work, I have not finished checking yet.

Keep up the good work.

  • Anthony

So I got to ask a question having to do with Foss or bust! Years ago I would use Wine to do things from Windows on linux and it worked at least sometimes. How come I don’t see that option discussed any more?

CHECK THIS OUT!

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, October 4, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC and 8 pm British Summer Time. Time conversions are available at https://www.timeanddate.com. You can use Austin, Texas as a Central Time reference.

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for audio editing
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4683 mintCast 344.5 – “Working” from Home https://mintcast.org/mintcast-344-5-working-from-home/ Wed, 30 Sep 2020 03:23:49 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4671 And finally, the feedback
Download
]]>

Download

1:38 Linux Innards
58:33 Vibrations from the Ether
1:17:19 Check This Out!
1:20:44 Outro

In our Innards section, we go over the working from home slash home-office setups we have.

And finally, the feedback

LINUX INNARDS:

“Work from Home” setup

  • Tony
    • My views of last time’s topic on Proprietary software v Open Source holding Linux back.
    • For me I’m very pragmatic about using what works, my first preference is Opensource but if there is a proprietary bit of software that would offer a better solution I would use it, and I do as I install the Nvidia drivers on my desktop PC as I have a dedicated Nvidia graphics card.
    • As for the availability of proprietary software for Linux such as Photoshop I’m not sure this is a major issue as this is a very niche package and a very small possible Linux user base making it uneconomic for Adobe to spend time creating a Linux version. Looking at industry leading software one example of Open Source leading the way is Blender, and again very few regular Linux users would even look at this let alone use it too it’s full potential, those that need this software for professional 3D rendering are already using it and probably on Linux.
  • Leo
  • Joe
    • MSI ge72 6qd with an i7-6700HQ and a gtx 960m
    • That has a 17 inch screen
    • For the second screen i have a laptop table with a 32 inch tv on it
    • The table also has a mount for my 7130 so i can do other small things when work is slow or i need to look something up
    • The table that my laptop sits on has an articulated arm for my microphone which is right now a hyperx quadcast or a samson meteor
    • Also use my Samsung Galaxy note 10 all day every day with several of my custom built lg hbs 770 headphones  along with a pair of skullcandy crushers if i want to listen to music and a modded pair of sony xb700s for when i can no longer stand the idea of using an in ear but want all day wear and a pair of 99 neos for when it has to be wired
    • Because i rely so heavily on my phone to be able to do my work i also keep my old galaxy s7 around incase something happens to the note
    • Extra wide recliner that is seeing a lot of wear and tear lately
    • Logitech k360 keyboard and m570 trackball mouse
    • ASUS AC2900 router
      • Need to be able to handle all my work stuff and all the kids school stuff
      • 300mbps connection from spectrum
    • My backup workstation in the garage
      • Ryzen 5 3600 16gb of ram rx 560
      • Two lg tvs as monitors
        • One 60 inch that i got for free because of a bad hdmi board
        • One 43 inch that i also got for free because my friend closed out his storage unit
      • Logitech g613 keyboard and m570 mouse
  • Tony H
    • So even though I am no longer working I do obviously use my PC for quite a lot of tasks as well as numerous laptops my main PC is my tower, and this is what I use for podcasting and much more.
    • So my Desktop PC setup is an:
      • HP Compaq Elite 8300 with the following specs:
        • A 2012 Intel® Core™ i7-3770 CPU @ 3.40GHz with 4 cores and 8 threads.
        • 24Gig of DDR3 Ram
        • NVIDIA GeForce 8400 256Mb Ram
        • Generic USB keyboard and mouse
        • And a 1Tb SSD in the primary Bay of my 4 bay IcyDoc. Running Mint Maté 19.3. There are an additional 2 128Gb drives in the dock with Ubuntu Studio 20.04 and Ubuntu Maté 20.04 installed. The 4th bay is not populated because for some reason it does not recognise any drives installed despite all the cables being connected??
    • I have a ProSound USB podcast mic, that I picked up in a bankruptcy sale a few years ago for a very reasonable £12/$15 and this is mounted onto a boom arm and has a pop filter in front of the mic.
    • I also have a SriHome USB webcam that I got a couple of months ago once I could find one that would not mean remortgaging the house. This cost £31 pounds on Amazon.
    • I have 2 4TB USB3 external backup drives with plenty of room for more data at the moment, Both have 1.9Tb of free space, I should have of site backup as well but at the moment I don’t. I also have a 2TB and 1Tb portable USB3 drive for storage on the go.
    • I have 2 Laser printers, a Greyscale Brother and a recently purchased HP Color Laser 150nw, bought for printing my own decals for my models, this cost £130 of Amazon but as buying decals from online sellers can be £2-3 a set this will quickly pay for itself in the next few months. Yes Decal paper is about £1/sheet but you can print many decals on one A4 sheet so the paper is hardly a factor in the decal cost.
  • Bo
    • Work setup
      • Lenovo laptop and docking station at work
      • KVM switch at home
    • Podcasting
      • System76 Kudu
      • Zoom H6 USB interface
    • Gaming
      • Ryzen 7 build
      • Dual Booting win and Linux
  • Tony W

Will talk about my basement office/studio setup

    • 2 desks, catty corner
      • One desk holds both my podcasting/music desktop as well as my work laptop setup
      • Other desk has my server on it and also use for working on any other machines
    • Network
      • Ran wired internet into basement
    • Repurposed wifi extender as access point with DD WRT
    • Work Setup
      • Thinkpad T480
      • Thinkpad dock
      • Lenovo wireless keyboard/mouse
      • Plantronics Savi w720
    • Music/Podcasting setup – Sentimental value and stories with a lot of this gear
      • Share peripherals w/ work setup
      • Old Dell desktop
        • Video card for multiple monitor support
      • M-Audio Delta 66 soundcard (have a presonus studio 24c)
      • Behringer XM1800S microphone (I have a MXL V57M will use at some point)
      • Neewer desk mount boom arm
      • Audio-Technica M50x headphones
      • Dual monitor “Goodwill Edition” setup (sometimes use a 3rd monitor)
      • JVC stereo R-K11
      • Bose bookshelf speakers
    • Tablet
    • PC in living room: Lenovo desktop (unsure of model right now, has 4th gen i3 in it, 8GB RAM)
      • Dual boot, mostly used in Windows these days by my son for homework
      • Linux mint partition

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Larry Murphy

Hello Leo & All,

I just hear episode 342.5. I wanted to let you know that way back when (early to mid 2000’s) when I wanted to multi-boot I found a You Tube that was a step-by step guide. The person had 106 OSes on his computer. The guide was very complete. I modified it for my needs. It worked for about 6 mos. Till it wouldn’t boot. Checking I found out that my downfall was updating the config files. I accepted one that was a default with the system upgrade and I needed to save the one I had filled out. It was a real nooby error.

Now I boot ALL my OSes from my bios, much easier and safer. I use a SSD for each OS, such as Windows and Linux. I only put OSes on SSD,s and data on separate internal and external drives.

I have found that Linux is quicker to install and even with ALL the customizing I do. I customize many of my folder and almost all of my desk top icons for easy identification. I have use the same icon in both Windows and Linux. I find it,s much easier in Linux because I don’t have change the pics I use to .ico files as is needed by Windows. I also find that my internet is faster in Linux as well as download speeds and I can burn dvds faster in Linux as well. I didn’t want you to think setting up multi-boot my my own. I wanted to do it just to see if I could. I always customize my Windows installs but the Linux installs are MUCH easier to do and as always I always enjoy listening to each one of you folks on the show. Thanks for the great content and all your hard work that goes into each show.

  • John Wallis

Hello Leo,

I would appreciate your assistance please with the error messages arising in the attached screenshot at boot stage, before and after the hard disk encryption password is entered. I look forward to hearing from you.

Try This GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash pci=noacpi”
  • John Wallis Part 2

Hi Leo,

I would appreciate your guidance on systemd-udevd.service.  What is it used for?  Lynis has marked it as unsafe.

  • Raphaël

You guys MADE MY DAY!!!

I was having a long day at work on Thursday. Then, listening to my podcasts, the Linux Mint Podcast was on… and then the listeners questions section was like… all about me 🙂 Sorry if I made this episode longer than you like 😉

This was a great joy to hear you talking about this question. I immediately felt the need to give back to you. I’ve made a donation to archive.org on your behalf!

As for the solutions proposed:

 – I just downloaded the LM20 ISO and plan on installing it soon

 – I’ve tried “sudo flatpak install org.videolan.VLC” and got the error message “error: REMOTE and REF must be specified”. The correct invocation (source) is “flatpak install flathub org.videolan.VLC” (+ no sudo needed). It seems to work, I have not finished checking yet.

Keep up the good work.

  • Anthony

So I got to ask a question having to do with Foss or bust! Years ago I would use Wine to do things from Windows on linux and it worked at least sometimes. How come I don’t see that option discussed any more?

CHECK THIS OUT!

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, October 4, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC and 8 pm British Summer Time. Time conversions are available at https://www.timeanddate.com. You can use Austin, Texas as a Central Time reference.

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for audio editing
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our Mumble backup
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4671 mintCast 341.5 – Don’t Cross the Streams (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-341-5-dont-cross-the-streams-mp3/ Wed, 19 Aug 2020 04:41:31 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4581 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]>

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1:27 Linux Innards
29:12 Vibrations from the Ether
47:56 Check This Out
55:30 Outro

In our Innards section, we talk OBS (Open Broadcaster Software)

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS: 

  • Livestream 
    • Easy mode option: mobile, and just use the app and hit the button (probably obvious)
    • Perhaps second easiest option: No software at all – just use the web browser.  
      • From a linux machine with audio/video source (webcam, microphone) just launch Firefox, go to Facebook, Youtube etc and go live from web browser (have done this on FB live, need to check this works in Youtube) 
    • JB
    • Our BEST option, by far, and still pretty user friendly – OBS Studio!!
      • Some reasons to use
        • It’s FREE!!!  Both as in freedom AND beer
        • Linux first
        • Multiple video sources
        • Stream gaming, screen recording
        • Add text, logos, etc to screen
    • All I do is add one plugin
      • /home/leo/.config/obs-studio/
      • In the plugins directory, dump your plugin here!
    • Plugins are not easy (or possible) in Flatpak. Possibly Snaps, too
      • /var/lib/flatpak/app/com.obsproject.Studio/current/LONGUUID/files…
      • This is where the plugins would be, thereabouts. Does not work!
      • Use the PPA if you want plugins.
      • Otherwise, the flatpak is easy enough for basic stuff.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • Brad Alexander

There is a website at devhints.io, and they have an amazing bash scripting cheatsheet…The other thing that is indispensable to me, add the following:

export HISTTIMEFORMAT=”%F %T “

to your .bashrc or /etc/profile.d/timestamp.sh. This will put a timestamp on every command when you do history. 

Leo’s Response

Brad’s Response to Leo’s Response 😉

du -s * | sort

du -sh * | sort -h

  • John Wallis Saga

…add the following lines to a file in the directory “/etc/modprobe.d”:

install tipc /bin/true

install sctp /bin/true

install rds /bin/true

install dccp /bin/true

Leo’s Response

STIG (Security Technical Implementation Guide)

TIPC (Transparent Interprocess Communication)

SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol)

RDS (Reliable Datagram Sockets)

DCCP (Datagram Congestion Control Protocol)

  • Another note by John Wallis

    Leo’s Response

[H]ere’s the high level overview.

Decide if you want a swap partition or swap file.

If partition, use Gparted on a Live Disk you have handy to create and format any empty space that may have been left over by the encrypted swap area. Make sure to format it as swap. Use the blkid command to note the UUID for usage later.

If file, use a Live Disk to create a file, named whatever you like, for instance “swapfile”, in / . Mark it swap by typing `mkswap /swapfile`

In either case, while still in the live environment, open up the /etc/fstab file in a text editor and add a new line.

if using a swapfile

/swapfile    none    swap    sw    0    0

if using a swap partition

UUID=ADD-THE-UUID-HERE    none    swap    sw    0    0

Save, exit and reboot.

Encrypting the swapfile or partition is another long email! Here is some light reading on the subject.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/64551/how-do-i-set-up-an-encrypted-swap-file-in-linux

  • Henrik Hemrin

Joe’s Response

[There have] been a couple phones that come from the factory with dual boot for example:

https://www.ubergizmo.com/2020/02/smartphone-dual-boot-android-linux/ 

as well as a couple of tablets

https://thedroidguy.com/best-dual-boot-os-tablets-1071876

Here is an article from xda on the benefits of multi boot

https://www.xda-developers.com/dual-boot-on-android-a-power-users-holy-grail/

CHECK THIS OUT

  • Utopic Unicorn
  • Leo
    • Flatseal can fix the cursor issues!
      • For the app in question, under Filesystems > Other Files, add the directory that contains your mouse to your flatpak app in Flatseal and put :ro at the end
      • For me that’s “~/.icons:ro” (no quotes)
  • Moss
    • Ubuntu Unity is still growing, along with sister projects Krob Linux for RPi, Ubuntu Ed and the new Ubuntu Lomiri. Lead dev Rudra Saraswat has acquired a couple new mirror sites, one in Russia and one in the US, in addition to their Mega.NZ, Google Drive and MediaFire download sites. They have greatly improved https://ubuntuunity.org and now they have a forum set up, to companion with their extensive Discord and Telegram groups. This is exciting stuff to be getting in on the ground floor of, and I recommend it.
    • My latest recording (single) has been included in a Wizard Rock annual collection. It’s not rock, but it’s included. I’m not sure what the site for the collection is, but you can hear it at https://mordewis.bandcamp.com

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, August 23, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC and 8 pm British Summer Time. Time conversions are available at Calculator.net should you need to determine your time.

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4581 mintCast 341.5 – Don’t Cross the Streams https://mintcast.org/mintcast-341-5-dont-cross-the-streams/ Wed, 19 Aug 2020 04:16:53 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4574 And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

1:27 Linux Innards
29:12 Vibrations from the Ether
47:56 Check This Out
55:30 Outro

In our Innards section, we talk OBS (Open Broadcaster Software)

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

LINUX INNARDS: 

  • Livestream 
    • Easy mode option: mobile, and just use the app and hit the button (probably obvious)
    • Perhaps second easiest option: No software at all – just use the web browser.  
      • From a linux machine with audio/video source (webcam, microphone) just launch Firefox, go to Facebook, Youtube etc and go live from web browser (have done this on FB live, need to check this works in Youtube) 
    • JB
    • Our BEST option, by far, and still pretty user friendly – OBS Studio!!
      • Some reasons to use
        • It’s FREE!!!  Both as in freedom AND beer
        • Linux first
        • Multiple video sources
        • Stream gaming, screen recording
        • Add text, logos, etc to screen
    • All I do is add one plugin
      • /home/leo/.config/obs-studio/
      • In the plugins directory, dump your plugin here!
    • Plugins are not easy (or possible) in Flatpak. Possibly Snaps, too
      • /var/lib/flatpak/app/com.obsproject.Studio/current/LONGUUID/files…
      • This is where the plugins would be, thereabouts. Does not work!
      • Use the PPA if you want plugins.
      • Otherwise, the flatpak is easy enough for basic stuff.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • Brad Alexander

There is a website at devhints.io, and they have an amazing bash scripting cheatsheet…The other thing that is indispensable to me, add the following:

export HISTTIMEFORMAT=”%F %T “

to your .bashrc or /etc/profile.d/timestamp.sh. This will put a timestamp on every command when you do history. 

Leo’s Response

Brad’s Response to Leo’s Response 😉

du -s * | sort

du -sh * | sort -h

  • John Wallis Saga

…add the following lines to a file in the directory “/etc/modprobe.d”:

install tipc /bin/true

install sctp /bin/true

install rds /bin/true

install dccp /bin/true

Leo’s Response

STIG (Security Technical Implementation Guide)

TIPC (Transparent Interprocess Communication)

SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol)

RDS (Reliable Datagram Sockets)

DCCP (Datagram Congestion Control Protocol)

  • Another note by John Wallis

    Leo’s Response

[H]ere’s the high level overview.

Decide if you want a swap partition or swap file.

If partition, use Gparted on a Live Disk you have handy to create and format any empty space that may have been left over by the encrypted swap area. Make sure to format it as swap. Use the blkid command to note the UUID for usage later.

If file, use a Live Disk to create a file, named whatever you like, for instance “swapfile”, in / . Mark it swap by typing `mkswap /swapfile`

In either case, while still in the live environment, open up the /etc/fstab file in a text editor and add a new line.

if using a swapfile

/swapfile    none    swap    sw    0    0

if using a swap partition

UUID=ADD-THE-UUID-HERE    none    swap    sw    0    0

Save, exit and reboot.

Encrypting the swapfile or partition is another long email! Here is some light reading on the subject.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/64551/how-do-i-set-up-an-encrypted-swap-file-in-linux

  • Henrik Hemrin 

Joe’s Response

[There have] been a couple phones that come from the factory with dual boot for example:

https://www.ubergizmo.com/2020/02/smartphone-dual-boot-android-linux/ 

as well as a couple of tablets

https://thedroidguy.com/best-dual-boot-os-tablets-1071876

Here is an article from xda on the benefits of multi boot

https://www.xda-developers.com/dual-boot-on-android-a-power-users-holy-grail/

CHECK THIS OUT

  • Utopic Unicorn
  • Leo
    • Flatseal can fix the cursor issues!
      • For the app in question, under Filesystems > Other Files, add the directory that contains your mouse to your flatpak app in Flatseal and put :ro at the end
      • For me that’s “~/.icons:ro” (no quotes)
  • Moss
    • Ubuntu Unity is still growing, along with sister projects Krob Linux for RPi, Ubuntu Ed and the new Ubuntu Lomiri. Lead dev Rudra Saraswat has acquired a couple new mirror sites, one in Russia and one in the US, in addition to their Mega.NZ, Google Drive and MediaFire download sites. They have greatly improved https://ubuntuunity.org and now they have a forum set up, to companion with their extensive Discord and Telegram groups. This is exciting stuff to be getting in on the ground floor of, and I recommend it.
    • My latest recording (single) has been included in a Wizard Rock annual collection. It’s not rock, but it’s included. I’m not sure what the site for the collection is, but you can hear it at https://mordewis.bandcamp.com

Announcements:

Our next episode will be Sunday, August 23, 2020 at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC and 8 pm British Summer Time. Time conversions are available at Calculator.net should you need to determine your time.

Wrap-up:

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

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

]]> 4574 mintCast 338.5 – The Ripple Effect (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-338-5-the-ripple-effect-mp3/ Wed, 08 Jul 2020 05:21:07 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4516 And finally, some feedback and a few suggestions
Download
]]>

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In our Innards section, we ask Owen how Linux is improving the lives around him.

And finally, some feedback and a few suggestions

LINUX INNARDS: 

Owen Peery Interview

What was your first Linux experience?

  • Berkeley Linux User group in the mid 90’s by accident, I had gotten my first computer, a little Mac, I was looking for the Berkeley Macintosh User Group, and I got them confused, BLUG vs BMUG, and when I went, I didn’t understand anything, and thought, what have I gotten myself into with this Mac. I eventually found the BMUG and I only barely understood a little more.
  • I used to go skateboarding in a warehouse in San Francisco in the 90’s called Shred of Dignity. There were a group of tech obsessed folks who lived and skated there. A man named Tom set up the warehouse after he wrote some computer program and sold it to the US Army and made a lot of money doing it. There were computers there as well and I knew they were running Linux and we thought those kids were gods because they sat at those computers typing away and we had no idea what they were doing, which is why I decided to get a computer myself, but I have no idea why I got a Mac, I think because I found one used that was in my budget.

What was the very first Linux distro you ran?

  • KDE in maybe 2003 or so. I bought a used computer when I started a functional art gallery in Philadelphia. I already had a working knowledge of computers and I bought this one because it had great specs, but when I got it home I turned it on and I had no idea what I was looking at. The guy I bought it from showed me a few things and that it worked at his home, so I bought it. I had used Windows a little by then but wasn’t that familiar with it, so it worked for him, so I thought, cool, it works. I called a friend who was studying Computer Science at Drexel University and he used Linux so I knew he could help. He used KDE as well so he helped me get started, but I only kept it for about a month. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. I installed Windows and was on my way.
  • I lived in Toulouse, France from 2007-2011 and when I was there I gave Linux a chance again. I went to the local LUG, mostly because I needed to practice my French technical vocabulary, and because I assumed some folks there would know English in case I couldn’t ask my questions in French. I used Ubuntu for about 6 months then, but I always had it dual boot with Windows because I was also in a Master’s program in Designing Information Systems and some of the software we used was Windows only, think VIsual Basic, BI, and PLSQL. When I started doing a lot more screencasts, I moved back to Macs to use Camtasia and Screenflow and gave Linux a rest for a bit.

What’s a typical workflow for you entail?

  • Depends on what I’m working on for the day
  • VIdeo editing
  • Browser based work with personal and work email
  • Working on making different workspaces reflect my needs

Why/Why not Linux Mint?

  • Great for beginners, interface looks similar enough to Windows that the transition is not too hard, I moved from Macs and it’s been easy for me to figure out a lot of things.

Does Linux do everything you need in a system?

  • Yes but . . .
  • Screenflow is an amazing app that is an all in one solution for screencasting. You can capture the video, multiple monitors possible, iPad screens even, you can edit the audio and edit the video, you can add callouts, you can add transitions, it’s really comprehensive, and at the same time not too overwhelming. It has the video and audio editing features needed to make great screencasts, but fewer than full featured audio and video editors, so you have what you need, but not too much.

Do you do any Linux Gaming?

  • Trying to but I’m not a gamer. I’ve got 2 STEAM games on my machine, Super Bernie Bros bc it was free and I wanted to see STEAM integration. Since it worked well, I bought a game called Streets of Rogue bc a student recommended it to me. It was on sale for $19.99 and I bought it, but I only play it infrequently, and never enough to make much progress or feel like, This is fun. I’m torn between how much to look up tips on the internet and how much should I struggle and figure it out myself. I sometimes gamify my classroom and I understand good games, digital or table top, have built in control structures to teach you how to play, so I’m wondering where those are in Streets of Rogue.
  • I’d love to find a fun game that helps teach you how to use the Terminal and learn more commands.

Do you contribute to the community?

  • Mint forums
  • Telegram groups
  • Bug reporting when Kdenlive went from 19-20 by accident
  • Running Mint 20.04 beta but not really reporting any issues I come across, it took so much to get it all setup correctly, not bc of Mint, but getting drive partitioned correctly and the right data on the right partitions.
  • I hope to eventually use my video creation skills to help out the community once I get settled on a good workflow and dial in the software I’ll use, really trying to stick to Kdenlive but DaVinci Resolve is tempting too

What was your main motivation for refurbishing computers?

  • Had a large closet full of older computers just sitting there at school, old mostly Windows 7 machines
  • Many families did not have a computer or not enough computers, if they had 3 children for example.
  • I had already been using Mint for about a year on an old laptop so I knew it worked well on older hardware
  • It saved the school money so we didn’t have to eWaste another load of computers
  • It gave families computers who needed them 
  • I teach computer science, not tech use, at school and it gave students much better computers to use than the Chromebooks the district was lending
  • District lent Chromebooks, but the backlog, wait, and locations weren’t that convenient, so we came up with our own system
  • We say in my district that in computer science we don’t just use tech we make it, so giving out Linux computers where there are no restrictions also furthers this idea, if you want your computer to do X well you can, you just have to learn how, there is nothing preventing you from making it work exactly how you want

Is there any piece of Linux and open source software, other than a browser, you could not live without?

  • Not really but I love using Peek. I have made over 10,000 video tutorials and screencasts, but recently I have fallen in love with making short animated gifs for simple how to things instead of a full video. Peek is so simple and the file size is small, so I use it a lot to visually model how to do things. It’s easier to email or put in a Google Slide deck or even put on a website for how to help.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER

  • jack

https://vscodium.com/

  • Leo’s response
  • More Jack!
  • Benjamin Moser
  • Travelinrob on ep337

http://liveusb.info/dotclear/index.php?pages/install

  • DaveW 
  • John Wallis Saga Episode x+1

I managed to get one test resolved, installing and configuring a PAM.  I

would appreciate your help with resolving the following, please:

* Consider running ARP monitoring software (arpwatch,arpon) [NETW-3032]

       https://cisofy.com/lynis/controls/NETW-3032/

I have installed Arpwatch and invoked arpwatch -i for both Ethernet and

wireless port, but re-running the scan makes no difference.  I look

forward to hearing from you.

  • Leo’s Response

Glad to hear from you again. I installed arpwatch and tinkered around with it a bit and it seems like there was a lot of digging for answers that aren’t fully addressed in the man page!

I’m not sure how familiar you are with layer 2 networking (MAC addresses, etc) so I’ll leave that alone for now. I can go into it more if you’d like.

Here’s the deal. Since you’ve got it installed, we’ll start from there. Check the status of the arpwatch service with systemctl status arpwatch . For me, the status was active (exited) but had these errors in the journal below:

Jun 09 16:06:39 maya arpwatch[2546]: chdir(/var/lib/arpwatch): Permission denied

Jun 09 16:06:39 maya arpwatch[2546]: (using current working directory)

Jun 09 16:06:39 maya arpwatch[2546]: pcap open wlp3s0: wlp3s0: You don’t have permission to capture

It seems there are two issues here. The first, I assume, is the fact that I didn’t create an arp.dat file. In the man page, it says you must do this first. The line is below.

Note that an empty arp.dat file must be created before the first time you run arpwatch.

However, it doesn’t exactly tell you where… Further down, though, it does say the default arpwatch directory was /var/lib/arpwatch, so I just shrugged my shoulders and created it there. It seems to have stopped complaining. As a note, I changed ownership and group ownership of the arp.dat file to the arpwatch user and group, and removed the read permissions from the other’s group.

The other issue is the pcap line above. pcap requires root permissions to run, so a sudo, or running arpwatch as root, is required.

After that, watching journalctl will allow you to monitor arpwatch in real-time. Below is an example of arpwatch “discovering” a new device banging around on layer 2.

Jun 09 16:41:21 maya arpwatch[3917]: new station 10.x.x.x xx:xx:xx:75:81:d7 wlp3s0

I’ve subbed in some x’s for paranoia’s sake.

You can also grep or search the journal at a later date:

journalctl | grep “new station”

I hope this helps!

  1. Without knowing much about your network, I’m going to assume it’s for the home. You probably only want one device running arpwatch per subnet, or more precisely, broadcast domain. Since pcap is working in promiscuous mode, it should see any layer 2 frame that touches the interface regardless of destination. However, there are certainly arguments for running multiple instances

CHECK THIS OUT! 

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 12th of July at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4516 mintCast 338.5 – The Ripple Effect https://mintcast.org/mintcast-338-5-the-ripple-effect/ Wed, 08 Jul 2020 05:20:46 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4511 And finally, some feedback and a few suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we ask Owen how Linux is improving the lives around him.

And finally, some feedback and a few suggestions

LINUX INNARDS: 

Owen Peery Interview

What was your first Linux experience?

  • Berkeley Linux User group in the mid 90’s by accident, I had gotten my first computer, a little Mac, I was looking for the Berkeley Macintosh User Group, and I got them confused, BLUG vs BMUG, and when I went, I didn’t understand anything, and thought, what have I gotten myself into with this Mac. I eventually found the BMUG and I only barely understood a little more.
  • I used to go skateboarding in a warehouse in San Francisco in the 90’s called Shred of Dignity. There were a group of tech obsessed folks who lived and skated there. A man named Tom set up the warehouse after he wrote some computer program and sold it to the US Army and made a lot of money doing it. There were computers there as well and I knew they were running Linux and we thought those kids were gods because they sat at those computers typing away and we had no idea what they were doing, which is why I decided to get a computer myself, but I have no idea why I got a Mac, I think because I found one used that was in my budget.

What was the very first Linux distro you ran?

  • KDE in maybe 2003 or so. I bought a used computer when I started a functional art gallery in Philadelphia. I already had a working knowledge of computers and I bought this one because it had great specs, but when I got it home I turned it on and I had no idea what I was looking at. The guy I bought it from showed me a few things and that it worked at his home, so I bought it. I had used Windows a little by then but wasn’t that familiar with it, so it worked for him, so I thought, cool, it works. I called a friend who was studying Computer Science at Drexel University and he used Linux so I knew he could help. He used KDE as well so he helped me get started, but I only kept it for about a month. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. I installed Windows and was on my way.
  • I lived in Toulouse, France from 2007-2011 and when I was there I gave Linux a chance again. I went to the local LUG, mostly because I needed to practice my French technical vocabulary, and because I assumed some folks there would know English in case I couldn’t ask my questions in French. I used Ubuntu for about 6 months then, but I always had it dual boot with Windows because I was also in a Master’s program in Designing Information Systems and some of the software we used was Windows only, think VIsual Basic, BI, and PLSQL. When I started doing a lot more screencasts, I moved back to Macs to use Camtasia and Screenflow and gave Linux a rest for a bit.

What’s a typical workflow for you entail?

  • Depends on what I’m working on for the day
  • VIdeo editing
  • Browser based work with personal and work email
  • Working on making different workspaces reflect my needs

Why/Why not Linux Mint?

  • Great for beginners, interface looks similar enough to Windows that the transition is not too hard, I moved from Macs and it’s been easy for me to figure out a lot of things.

Does Linux do everything you need in a system?

  • Yes but . . .
  • Screenflow is an amazing app that is an all in one solution for screencasting. You can capture the video, multiple monitors possible, iPad screens even, you can edit the audio and edit the video, you can add callouts, you can add transitions, it’s really comprehensive, and at the same time not too overwhelming. It has the video and audio editing features needed to make great screencasts, but fewer than full featured audio and video editors, so you have what you need, but not too much.

Do you do any Linux Gaming?

  • Trying to but I’m not a gamer. I’ve got 2 STEAM games on my machine, Super Bernie Bros bc it was free and I wanted to see STEAM integration. Since it worked well, I bought a game called Streets of Rogue bc a student recommended it to me. It was on sale for $19.99 and I bought it, but I only play it infrequently, and never enough to make much progress or feel like, This is fun. I’m torn between how much to look up tips on the internet and how much should I struggle and figure it out myself. I sometimes gamify my classroom and I understand good games, digital or table top, have built in control structures to teach you how to play, so I’m wondering where those are in Streets of Rogue.
  • I’d love to find a fun game that helps teach you how to use the Terminal and learn more commands.

Do you contribute to the community?

  • Mint forums
  • Telegram groups
  • Bug reporting when Kdenlive went from 19-20 by accident
  • Running Mint 20.04 beta but not really reporting any issues I come across, it took so much to get it all setup correctly, not bc of Mint, but getting drive partitioned correctly and the right data on the right partitions.
  • I hope to eventually use my video creation skills to help out the community once I get settled on a good workflow and dial in the software I’ll use, really trying to stick to Kdenlive but DaVinci Resolve is tempting too

What was your main motivation for refurbishing computers?

  • Had a large closet full of older computers just sitting there at school, old mostly Windows 7 machines
  • Many families did not have a computer or not enough computers, if they had 3 children for example.
  • I had already been using Mint for about a year on an old laptop so I knew it worked well on older hardware
  • It saved the school money so we didn’t have to eWaste another load of computers
  • It gave families computers who needed them 
  • I teach computer science, not tech use, at school and it gave students much better computers to use than the Chromebooks the district was lending
  • District lent Chromebooks, but the backlog, wait, and locations weren’t that convenient, so we came up with our own system
  • We say in my district that in computer science we don’t just use tech we make it, so giving out Linux computers where there are no restrictions also furthers this idea, if you want your computer to do X well you can, you just have to learn how, there is nothing preventing you from making it work exactly how you want

Is there any piece of Linux and open source software, other than a browser, you could not live without?

  • Not really but I love using Peek. I have made over 10,000 video tutorials and screencasts, but recently I have fallen in love with making short animated gifs for simple how to things instead of a full video. Peek is so simple and the file size is small, so I use it a lot to visually model how to do things. It’s easier to email or put in a Google Slide deck or even put on a website for how to help.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER

  • jack

https://vscodium.com/

  • Leo’s response
  • More Jack!
  • Benjamin Moser
  • Travelinrob on ep337

http://liveusb.info/dotclear/index.php?pages/install

  • DaveW 
  • John Wallis Saga Episode x+1

I managed to get one test resolved, installing and configuring a PAM.  I

would appreciate your help with resolving the following, please:

* Consider running ARP monitoring software (arpwatch,arpon) [NETW-3032]

       https://cisofy.com/lynis/controls/NETW-3032/

I have installed Arpwatch and invoked arpwatch -i for both Ethernet and

wireless port, but re-running the scan makes no difference.  I look

forward to hearing from you.

  • Leo’s Response

Glad to hear from you again. I installed arpwatch and tinkered around with it a bit and it seems like there was a lot of digging for answers that aren’t fully addressed in the man page!

I’m not sure how familiar you are with layer 2 networking (MAC addresses, etc) so I’ll leave that alone for now. I can go into it more if you’d like.

Here’s the deal. Since you’ve got it installed, we’ll start from there. Check the status of the arpwatch service with systemctl status arpwatch . For me, the status was active (exited) but had these errors in the journal below:

Jun 09 16:06:39 maya arpwatch[2546]: chdir(/var/lib/arpwatch): Permission denied

Jun 09 16:06:39 maya arpwatch[2546]: (using current working directory)

Jun 09 16:06:39 maya arpwatch[2546]: pcap open wlp3s0: wlp3s0: You don’t have permission to capture

It seems there are two issues here. The first, I assume, is the fact that I didn’t create an arp.dat file. In the man page, it says you must do this first. The line is below.

Note that an empty arp.dat file must be created before the first time you run arpwatch.

However, it doesn’t exactly tell you where… Further down, though, it does say the default arpwatch directory was /var/lib/arpwatch, so I just shrugged my shoulders and created it there. It seems to have stopped complaining. As a note, I changed ownership and group ownership of the arp.dat file to the arpwatch user and group, and removed the read permissions from the other’s group.

The other issue is the pcap line above. pcap requires root permissions to run, so a sudo, or running arpwatch as root, is required.

After that, watching journalctl will allow you to monitor arpwatch in real-time. Below is an example of arpwatch “discovering” a new device banging around on layer 2.

Jun 09 16:41:21 maya arpwatch[3917]: new station 10.x.x.x xx:xx:xx:75:81:d7 wlp3s0

I’ve subbed in some x’s for paranoia’s sake.

You can also grep or search the journal at a later date:

journalctl | grep “new station”

I hope this helps!

  1. Without knowing much about your network, I’m going to assume it’s for the home. You probably only want one device running arpwatch per subnet, or more precisely, broadcast domain. Since pcap is working in promiscuous mode, it should see any layer 2 frame that touches the interface regardless of destination. However, there are certainly arguments for running multiple instances

CHECK THIS OUT! 

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 12th of July at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4511 mintCast 337.5 – Managing the Managers (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-337-5-managing-the-managers-mp3/ Wed, 24 Jun 2020 05:19:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4494 And finally, some feedback and a few suggestions
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In our Innards section, we manage windows.

And finally, some feedback and a few suggestions

Window Managers

Types of Window Managers

Compositing

As the name implies, a compositor composes how the window looks and functions.  It does this by using an off-screen buffer for each window. Each buffer is made into an image. The compositor uses those images for drawing and re-drawing of the windows, also for when it is moved or resized or closed.  Windows can overlap or ‘stack over’ one another.  Each window is drawn and redrawn individually, along with the desktop wallpaper image.  Compositing also uses those buffer images to allow for 2D and 3D effects such as Blending, Fading, Scaling, Rotation, Bending, Contortion and Blurring, etc.

Examples would be the wobbly windows effect in the KWin Window Manager in KDE Plasma, or the ALT-TAB display of open windows (Flip Switch, Cover Switch, etc.), or the appearance of a window sliding in and out or slowly fading in and out when it is opened, closed or minimized.

One of my favorite effects is Shade, sometimes referred to as Roll Up.  When that feature is used, the window is reduced to only the title bar being visible.  This was very useful back in the 90’s and early 2000’s due to the small sizes of the monitors then; you could keep the application on the screen but it took up much less space.  KWin among others support this feature.

Here is a brief list of Compositing Window Managers.

  • Compiz
  • KWin (used in KDE Plasma)
  • Metacity (Used in GNOME 2.2)
  • Mutter (Used in GNOME 3.x)
  • Xfwm (used in Xfce)
  • Enlightenment (aka E)

Some notable history of the above listed Window Managers:

Compiz – The first version of Compiz was released by Novell in 2006 who acquired SUSE 3 year prior to that.  It is currently maintained by Canonical who also maintains the Ubuntu Linux Distribution.

Kwin –  Compositing support was added in version 4.0.

Metacity – GNOME 2.2 used Metacity as the Window Manager.

Mutter – Mutter replaced Metacity in GNOME 3.0.  Mutter added OpenGL rendering support instead of GTK+ Rendering that Matacity used. In January of 2012 Mutter was forked to create Muffin.  Version 1.2 of Cinnamon used Muffin as its Window Manager.

Xfwm – It was forked from FVWM in 1997.  In version 2 of Xfce in 1998 it became the default Window Manager.  Adoption of Xfce into distributions was rocky until version 3.  This was because of the XForms Toolkit that was used to create it, was proprietary software.  Both Redhat and Debian rejected its use for that reason.  Though Debian did allow version 2 in their Contrib Repository.  Xforms is where Xfce gets its name from, “XForms Common Environment”.  In order to remove Xforms, a complete rewrite using GTK in 1999.  It was then licensed under the GPL allowing distributions to include it, and version 4.2 added support for compositing.   The letters in Xfce no longer mean anything.

Enlightenment – Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler) Forked FVWM in 1996.  He then based E on that source code in the same year.  E started as a Compositing Window Manager.  It was commonly used as the Compositor for GNOME 1.0 .  Version 0.17 of E was in development for 12 years starting in December of 2000.  It was a complete rewrite of E16.  Once E17 was released.  It was able to be considered a Desktop Environment using E as the Compositor and the new Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL).  Bodhi Linux used E17 as a base but forked it to create the Moksha Desktop.  E16 is still in active development and is independent of E17.

As a side note.  Microsoft Windows also uses a form of Compositing called Desktop Window Manager.  It is used in Windows Vista through to Windows 10.  Apple’s macOS also uses a compositor called Quartz.  During the mid 1980’s Commodore’s Amiga OS used one called Intuition.

Stacking

Stacking Window Managers (aka Floating Window Managers) are very similar to Compositing Window Managers.  The differences are in how the windows are drawn or re-drawn.  The windows are drawn in a specific order allowing them to overlap or ‘stack’.  It is done by starting with the desktop.  Then proceeds to draw each window from back to front until the foreground window is drawn.  When there are many windows open.  The redrawing process can be slow.  Background windows when brought to the foreground window.  Will be redrawn and any windows that were covered will also be re-drawn.  Other requests for being redrawn is when a window has new content to display.  Some Window Managers are able to detect when a window needs redrawn or not.  An example would be a background window that is covered by other windows will not be updated.  Since it can not be seen anyway.  Another example is when a window is selected.  If nothing changed in the arrangement of the other windows.  Only that window is redrawn.

Some negative effects to stacking is when an application crashes.  If it can not be updated, that window becomes static and can cause a smearing effect to the other windows when they are moved.  Even if an application has not crashed, moving a window in a fast motion can cause a blurring or smearing effect until the Window Manager can catch up and update the affected windows.

Other negative effects is that the Window Manager is limited to how much a graphics card can speed up the drawing function.

There have been some technical advancements to try to reduce these effects.  Without going into detail.  In some cases, if a window hasn’t needed updating but was moved, it would be required to be redrawn.  A buffered image of what the other window looked like before the other window was moved will be used;  that would only require one window to be re-drawn instead of two.

There are also some Hybrid Stacking Window Managers, which basically use a simple form of compositing using the graphics cards frame buffer.

Here is a brief list of Stacking Window Managers:

  • Blackbox
  • Fluxbox
  • IceWM
  • JWM
  • Openbox
  • Sawfish
  • FVWM
  • Window Maker
  • UWM
  • TWM

Some notable history of the above listed Window Managers:

Blackbox – It was created around 1997 by Bradley Hughes, who was a student in Amarillo, Texas.  He just wanted to see if he could write his own.  It was written in C++ using all orginal code though he was inspired by Window Maker.

Fluxbox – It is a fork of Blackbox version 0.61.1 in 2001.  It added tabbed windows and a System Tray/Notification area, to name a few tools.  It is used in the live cd of GParted.  AntiX and Linux Mint also have used it.  MX Linux has a MX-Fluxbox edition.

IceWM – IceWM was also created around 1997 by Marko Maček.  It was created from scratch in C++.  It can be themed to look like Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows 7 and OS/2, among others.  It is used in Absolute Linux, AntiX and the light version of VectorLinux; openSUSE for Raspberry Pi also uses IceWM.

JWM – Joe’s Window Manager was created by Joe Wingbermuehle.  He wrote JWM in C on his Silicon Graphics Octane desktop to replace the 4Dwm that was used as the default in Irix, which itself was created by Silicon Graphics and based on AT&T’s Unix System V.

Openbox – It is a fork of Blackbox 0.65 but was completely re-written in version 3.0 and is no longer based on any Blackbox code.  It was released in 2002.  It is used in LXDE, LXQt, Lubuntu and Manjaro Linux.

Sawfish – It was released in 2000.  Sawfish, unlike the above Window Managers that used a standard config file, uses a Lisp-like scripting language for its code and configuration.  It was originally called Sawmill but the name was changed due to another software program using that name.  Sawfish was the Window Manager in GNOME 2 until the release of GNOME 2.2.

FVWM – In 1993 Robert Nation while working for the United States Department of Defense.  He started a project to reduce the memory usage and adding support for virtual desktops to the Tab Window Manager.  He is known for his terminal emulator, rxvt.  In 1994 he handed over the maintenance of FVWM to Charles Hines.  Robert’s last version was 1.24r.  Charles completely overhauled the code.  As a result, many distributions would offer each as a separate program due to peoples preferring one or the other.  In 1997 FVWM became the Window Manager for Xfce.

Window Maker – Released in 1997, Window Maker contains code from FVWM and was created to emulate NeXTSTEP OS.  It is said that using Window Maker is the closest you can come to using NeXSTEP OS without actually being on a NeXSTEP computer.  As a side note, NeXTSTEP OS was created by NeXT Computer who was started by Steve Jobs (Co-Founder of Apple).  He was forced out of Apple in 1985. In 1997 Apple bought NeXT and shortly thereafter named Jobs the interim CEO and eventually CEO of Apple once again.  When Apple needed to replace the Classic Mac OS in 1999, they open sourced NeXTSTEP version 4 to create Darwin.  With some code added from BSD and the Mach kernel, Darwin became OS X now known as MacOS.

UWM – In 1985 the Ultrix Window Manager was created by Digital Equipment Corporation (aka DEC) for its Ultrix Operating System.  Ultrix was based on version 4.2 of BSD which, in turn, was a direct descendant of the original Unix created by AT&T’s Bell Labs Research Center.  It was made the standard option in X10 Release 3 of the same year.  In 1986 X version 11 was released.  UWM was the only Window Manager that was ported to the new version.

TWM – Tab Window Manager was created by Tom LaStrange in 1987 and was his first X program.  It was originally called Tom’s Window Manager; the name was changed when the X developers at MIT adopted it in 1989 for use in X11 Release 4.  Thirty-three years later, TWM is still standard with X.org Server.  It has added title bars to the windows, and also added shaped windows and icon management.  By default the windows title bar only has the Resize button and the Iconify button.  Iconify will reduce the window to an icon.  There is no Close Window button, though one can be added via the .twmrc file.  Oddly or not, the function is described as deleting a window.  TWM was written on a monochrome Sun 3/50 using the vi text editor.  The model 3 was a fast computer with an amazing 15.7 MHz Motorola 68020 processor and 4 MB of ram.

Other bits of trivia are:

The Xerox Alto created by Xerox PARC in 1973 was the first computer that was specifically designed to use a graphical user interface (aka GUI).  The Alto used a Stacking Window Manager.

Both Microsoft and Apple used Stacking Window Managers.  For Apple it was the Classic Mac OS in 1984 using the QuickDraw 2D Graphics Library; Microsoft used one in Windows 2 through Windows XP which spanned from 1987 till 2001.

GEM (Graphics Environment Engine) was created by Digital Research in 1985; it was a stacking style GUI for use on their DR DOS (similar to MS DOS) and for Atari to use on their ST series of computers.  Incidentally, Digital Research also created the CP/M OS in 1974 which was similar to MS DOS.  Apple sued Digital Research due to it being too similar to Mac OS.  The terms of the settlement included having DRI remove the stacking capabilities.

Tiling and Dynamic

I am combining the two because Dynamic can use both Stacking and Tiling features.  In some cases the stacking needs to be enabled; in other cases it is the window management features of stacking that are used.

Tiling Window Managers are completely different from the Stacking and Compositing Window Managers.  The windows are mutually non-overlapping frames.  It is very common to only have the frame visible, with no title bar or buttons to click.  Actually, a mouse is not even used in most traditional Tiling Window Managers.  By that I mean you don’t use the mouse to interact with the Window Manager, but you still use the mouse in applications.  The first window is opened full screen, then the second is half of the screen.  The third is one half size frame lengthwise on one side of the screen, with the two other frames splitting the other half of the screen.  Once a fourth window is opened, you have 4 equally sized windows.  The process of halving the screen continues.

The operation is heavily into keyboard commands.  In some Tiling Window Managers, the keyboard is the only way to interact with the windows.  This presents an obvious hurdle for people switching to a Tiling Window Manager.  The first time you use a Tiling Window Manager is reminiscent of the Vi/VIM meme where you can’t quit Vi or VIM.  If you are not familiar with that,  Vi is a terminal based text editor, and Vim is an updated version of Vi.  It has two modes: Command Mode (to save, cut, paste, exit, etc) and Insert Mode (to type text into the file).  Unless you know how to change modes and then know the command to exit, you will be stuck in Vi/VIM forever!  How is that reminiscent?  You are basically presented with a similar black screen and all you have is the keyboard commands to interact with.

Like Stacking Window Managers, Tiling Window Managers date back to the early days of the original Unix OS.  Xerox PARC released CEDAR in 1982, the first windowing system using a Tiled Window Manager.

Here is a brief list of Tiling and Dynamic Window Managers:

  • dwm
  • xmonad
  • awesome
  • i3
  • ratpoison

Some notable history of the above listed Window Managers:

dwm – Created in 2006.  In order to change configuration options.  You must edit the source code and re-compile.  Unlike other Tiling Window Managers, dwm allows moving and resizing the windows with a mouse.  It is a keyboard-driven interface.  Using dmenu, you would type in an executable name, which will show matching names thus allowing you to launch that program.  Its source code has been forked to create many other Tiling Window Managers, such as the Awesome Window Manager and xmonad.

xmonad – Created in 2007.  It is written in Haskell, which is a functional programming language.  Since it was forked from dwm, it adds per-workspace layouts, tiling reflection, state preservation, layout mirroring and per-screen status bars.  xmonad also has support for GNOME: one big change is in the configuration.  You modify a configuration file and reload it while the Window Manager is running.

Awesome – It was created in 2007.  It would be considered a Dynamic Window Manager, as it allows for stacking windows (overlapping windows).  Awesome uses the Lua Scripting Language.  You can edit the config file, save changes and restart Awesome, with no need to recompile as you would with dwm.  Awesome can be fully operated by way of keyboard commands.  By default, a menu panel is available for you to click on with your mouse. This panel can be removed as desired.  There is a keyboard command superkey + s which will show all of your commands.  The superkey is the key on the left side of the keyboard between the ctrl and alt keys.  Awesome is generally suggested as a person’s first dive into Tiling Window Managers.

i3 – It was created in 2009 completely from scratch.  i3 supports Tiling, Stacking and Tabbed Window layouts.  You configure i3 with a plain text file.  Window management is controlled by the user.  You can resize, split vertically or horizontally the windows.  It also can use dmenu which is also used in dwm.

ratpoison – Created in 2000 by Shawn Betts.  The name reflects the goal of not using the mouse; in fact you can’t use a mouse at all.  It is 100% keyboard driven and has a very minimalist design, with no fancy graphics and no window decorations.  All you have is a frame around the window.  The thinking is, why have something to click on when you don’t use a mouse?

Most of these are good examples that show the Open Source spirit.  One person creates something: other people modify it in their vision.

  • Questions
    • For those that are unfamiliar, what is the function of a window manager?  Why would someone want to use an alternate window manager in Linux Desktop?
  • Windows Manager vs Desktop Environment
    • Window Manager – controls placement and appearance of “windows” on top of X.org (more widely used in Linux compared to XFree86) X-windows implementation. Can be very barebones or more featureful.
    • Desktop Environment – Builds on top of a Window Manager and includes a more                                                                             robust user experience from setup, tuning, hardware management/integration, file and network utilities, etc.
  • Display Managers – What controls the login to your choice of Window Manager or Desktop Environment. Handles the transition from startup to account login, executing X.org and launching Window Manager or Desktop Environment.
  • Window Manager Examples:
    • Twm – tab window manager – very very basic, used to be default in most distributions when you fired up X for the first time without any further configuration.
      • Used to be packaged with X.org and probably is an optional xorg package
    • Blackbox, Openbox, Fluxbox – Both openbox and fluxbox forked from blackbox.
      • Blackbox: This fork is most up to date https://github.com/bbidulock/blackboxwm
      • Fluxbox: http://fluxbox.org
      • Openbox is used in LXDE and LXQt – http://openbox.org/wiki/Main_Page
    • Icewm – Ice Window Manager – https://ice-wm.org/
    • WindowMaker – Derived from GNUStep https://www.windowmaker.org/
    • FVWM – https://github.com/fvwmorg/fvwm3 
    • Compiz – http://www.compiz.org/ hit the heights of popularity for it’s OpenGL effects.
    • Awesome – tiling window manager https://awesomewm.org/
    • Ratpoison – tiling window manager https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/
    • SawFish – Used to be Gnome’s Windowmanager
    • KWin – KDE Plasma window manager https://userbase.kde.org/KWin
    • GnomeShell – Gnome’s window manager maybe https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell
  • Desktop Environment
  • Leo
    • Seems to me the biggest difference between full desktop managers, floating window managers and tiling window managers is the amount the user is willing to interact with the mouse.
      • Thoughts?
    • I’ve been getting the hang of using the tiling WM i3 by way of Regolith.
    • There is a steep learning curve at the beginning. Once you have the important hotkeys memorized, things get way better. Cheat sheets help, but the speed doesn’t come till you have them down.

Removing i3-gaps gaps to give yourself more screen real estate. Especially handy for laptops with lower resolutions.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • Jack

https://www.ostechnix.com/how-to-rename-multiple-files-at-once-in-linux/

  • Michael
  • Caramale on Twitter

CHECK THIS OUT! 

  • Dale

Eye strain can be very painful and irritating.  What I use is Redshift.  It is available for most Linux distributions.  Some DE’s have it built-in to the DE.  I believe Windows 10 also has a similar feature.  What it does is change the color temperature of the monitor.  By default most monitors use 6500k.  The k is for Kelvin, a scientific way of measuring light among others.

5000k – 6500k is Daylight.  3000k is Fluorescent. 2700k is a Incandescent Light Bulb.  2200k is early Sun rise or a lantern.  Just to name a few.  

During the evening hours and overnight.  You can set Redshift to use 2700k at sunset and 5000k or 6500k after sunrise.  It can automate this as well.  You have the option of setting your sunrise and sunset times manually.  The other option is for it to detect your location or manually entering your zip code.  Everyone I have shown this to complained about their monitor having a red hue.  The problem always is the light they are using in the room.  If your light is at 5000k or there is sunlight coming through a window.  So yes your monitor will have a red hue.  If your light was using 2700k and your monitor is using 2700k.  You will not notice the difference.  

The solution is to use SceneSwitch light bulbs.  They are LED light bulbs that can change from 5000k to 2700k to 2200k.  They are available from the various Home Improvement Stores for about $7 per bulb.  Amazon also has them but in packs of 4 or more.  I personally use the Phillips brand.  They use 9.5w of electricity.

How it works is very simple.  It uses a standard Incandescent Light Bulb socket.  It even is in the same shape so you can continue using a lamp shade that attaches to the bulb.  You turn the lamp on.  If you want to change the color temperature.  Just turn the lamp on.  Once it turns on, turn it off again.  Do that until you see the color temperature you want to use.  Once you have the color temperature  you want.  Just leave the light on for a few seconds to let it save that setting.  You are now done.  It will remember this setting the next time it is turned on.

Everyone that I have shown these SceneSwitch light bulbs to has loved them.  Especially in the morning.  You can set the light to 2200k the night before.  When you wake up.  You will not be blinded by a bright harsh light.  Personally I have noticed a positive change in my eyes after using these lights for a couple years.

http://jonls.dk/redshift/ 

https://www.lighting.philips.com/main/prof/led-lamps-and-tubes/led-bulbs/led-sceneswitch/929001263204_EU/product 

  • Moss

Ventoy, Ventoy, Ventoy

You know that I love checking out various distros, and that I keep a box of USB sticks with various distros ready to go in case I need to change something or someone I know would like to try Linux. There are 10 color-coded USB sticks and 5 other sticks in my box.

I have been looking for a way to use one large USB stick to install several distros. Either due to my lack of skill, bad software, or my hardware, I have failed to be able use at least 3 different multiboot apps I’ve tried.

I mentioned that in the Linux Mint Telegram group, which is nice in that it includes a lot of users in India. My friends there told me about Ventoy, of which I had not heard a whisper among my American/UK friends. (Of course, since that time, 2 or 3 other podcasts have covered it.) So I looked into it. 

There is a GUI version for Windows, but there is a version for Linux. You install it by downloading and extracting a .tar.gz file and following instructions. Not all sets of instructions are complete, so we’re going to try to help here.

You’ll probably want to create a Ventoy directory and extract the files there to keep things easy. You then open a Terminal and CD to the Ventoy directory. And then you run this command for a simple Ventoy stick:

sudo sh Ventoy2Disk.sh -I /dev/sdx

…where “sdx” needs to be changed to the address of your USB stick, probably sdc.  The complete command, with switches, is:

sudo sh Ventoy2Disk.sh { -i | -I | -u } /dev/sdx

(from https://www.ventoy.net/en/doc_start.html )

I got lucky; I got Ventoy loaded to my Memorex USB 3.1 64Gb stick on the first try. And there is nothing but fun from here on in. You don’t have to extract ISOs, just copy the whole ISO to the stick. When you go to use it, you get a graphical menu for Ventoy with all available distros listed. Select which one to load, and Ventoy does the extraction itself.

Installing Ventoy formats the stick as exFAT, so you can’t add Ventoy to a stick you’re already using without losing the files on it; however, after installing Ventoy to the stick, you can use the stick to store other files and access them.

Not every ISO has been approved for Ventoy. I found I cannot use Feren OS. But I can use the latest BionicPup64, Pearl, any Ubuntu or Mint, SuSE… Calculate Linux can be installed using Ventoy but cannot be run as a live disk (also true of a few other distros, determined by the distro, not Ventoy). But here’s an extra thing: You can also install Windows ISO from the same Ventoy stick as your Linux ISOs. (Don’t tell anyone, but I have Win 7, 8.1 and 10 ISOs downloaded…)

For some distros, you can even set them up, add and delete programs, and the ISO gets saved with those changes — this is called “persistence”, and you can check the Ventoy site for more information on what has been tested, as well as for lots more information on this app. Caution: the devs of Ventoy are not well-versed in English, so checking other sites may be helpful as well, such as https://www.ostechnix.com/how-to-create-multiboot-usb-drives-with-ventoy-in-linux/

My current feeling is that I should have 3 sticks — one for Live ISOs, one for Install-only ISOs, and one for Persistent ISOs which I have modified.

I heartily recommend Ventoy with no reservation.

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 28th of June at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4494 mintCast 337.5 – Managing the Managers https://mintcast.org/mintcast-337-5-managing-the-managers/ Wed, 24 Jun 2020 04:40:24 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4488 And finally, some feedback and a few suggestions
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In our Innards section, we manage windows.

And finally, some feedback and a few suggestions

Window Managers

Types of Window Managers

Compositing

As the name implies, a compositor composes how the window looks and functions.  It does this by using an off-screen buffer for each window. Each buffer is made into an image. The compositor uses those images for drawing and re-drawing of the windows, also for when it is moved or resized or closed.  Windows can overlap or ‘stack over’ one another.  Each window is drawn and redrawn individually, along with the desktop wallpaper image.  Compositing also uses those buffer images to allow for 2D and 3D effects such as Blending, Fading, Scaling, Rotation, Bending, Contortion and Blurring, etc.

Examples would be the wobbly windows effect in the KWin Window Manager in KDE Plasma, or the ALT-TAB display of open windows (Flip Switch, Cover Switch, etc.), or the appearance of a window sliding in and out or slowly fading in and out when it is opened, closed or minimized.

One of my favorite effects is Shade, sometimes referred to as Roll Up.  When that feature is used, the window is reduced to only the title bar being visible.  This was very useful back in the 90’s and early 2000’s due to the small sizes of the monitors then; you could keep the application on the screen but it took up much less space.  KWin among others support this feature.

Here is a brief list of Compositing Window Managers.

  • Compiz
  • KWin (used in KDE Plasma)
  • Metacity (Used in GNOME 2.2)
  • Mutter (Used in GNOME 3.x)
  • Xfwm (used in Xfce)
  • Enlightenment (aka E)

Some notable history of the above listed Window Managers:

Compiz – The first version of Compiz was released by Novell in 2006 who acquired SUSE 3 year prior to that.  It is currently maintained by Canonical who also maintains the Ubuntu Linux Distribution.

Kwin –  Compositing support was added in version 4.0.

Metacity – GNOME 2.2 used Metacity as the Window Manager.

Mutter – Mutter replaced Metacity in GNOME 3.0.  Mutter added OpenGL rendering support instead of GTK+ Rendering that Matacity used. In January of 2012 Mutter was forked to create Muffin.  Version 1.2 of Cinnamon used Muffin as its Window Manager.

Xfwm – It was forked from FVWM in 1997.  In version 2 of Xfce in 1998 it became the default Window Manager.  Adoption of Xfce into distributions was rocky until version 3.  This was because of the XForms Toolkit that was used to create it, was proprietary software.  Both Redhat and Debian rejected its use for that reason.  Though Debian did allow version 2 in their Contrib Repository.  Xforms is where Xfce gets its name from, “XForms Common Environment”.  In order to remove Xforms, a complete rewrite using GTK in 1999.  It was then licensed under the GPL allowing distributions to include it, and version 4.2 added support for compositing.   The letters in Xfce no longer mean anything.

Enlightenment – Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler) Forked FVWM in 1996.  He then based E on that source code in the same year.  E started as a Compositing Window Manager.  It was commonly used as the Compositor for GNOME 1.0 .  Version 0.17 of E was in development for 12 years starting in December of 2000.  It was a complete rewrite of E16.  Once E17 was released.  It was able to be considered a Desktop Environment using E as the Compositor and the new Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL).  Bodhi Linux used E17 as a base but forked it to create the Moksha Desktop.  E16 is still in active development and is independent of E17.

As a side note.  Microsoft Windows also uses a form of Compositing called Desktop Window Manager.  It is used in Windows Vista through to Windows 10.  Apple’s macOS also uses a compositor called Quartz.  During the mid 1980’s Commodore’s Amiga OS used one called Intuition.

Stacking

Stacking Window Managers (aka Floating Window Managers) are very similar to Compositing Window Managers.  The differences are in how the windows are drawn or re-drawn.  The windows are drawn in a specific order allowing them to overlap or ‘stack’.  It is done by starting with the desktop.  Then proceeds to draw each window from back to front until the foreground window is drawn.  When there are many windows open.  The redrawing process can be slow.  Background windows when brought to the foreground window.  Will be redrawn and any windows that were covered will also be re-drawn.  Other requests for being redrawn is when a window has new content to display.  Some Window Managers are able to detect when a window needs redrawn or not.  An example would be a background window that is covered by other windows will not be updated.  Since it can not be seen anyway.  Another example is when a window is selected.  If nothing changed in the arrangement of the other windows.  Only that window is redrawn.

Some negative effects to stacking is when an application crashes.  If it can not be updated, that window becomes static and can cause a smearing effect to the other windows when they are moved.  Even if an application has not crashed, moving a window in a fast motion can cause a blurring or smearing effect until the Window Manager can catch up and update the affected windows.

Other negative effects is that the Window Manager is limited to how much a graphics card can speed up the drawing function.

There have been some technical advancements to try to reduce these effects.  Without going into detail.  In some cases, if a window hasn’t needed updating but was moved, it would be required to be redrawn.  A buffered image of what the other window looked like before the other window was moved will be used;  that would only require one window to be re-drawn instead of two.

There are also some Hybrid Stacking Window Managers, which basically use a simple form of compositing using the graphics cards frame buffer.

Here is a brief list of Stacking Window Managers:

  • Blackbox
  • Fluxbox
  • IceWM
  • JWM
  • Openbox
  • Sawfish
  • FVWM
  • Window Maker
  • UWM
  • TWM

Some notable history of the above listed Window Managers:

Blackbox – It was created around 1997 by Bradley Hughes, who was a student in Amarillo, Texas.  He just wanted to see if he could write his own.  It was written in C++ using all orginal code though he was inspired by Window Maker.

Fluxbox – It is a fork of Blackbox version 0.61.1 in 2001.  It added tabbed windows and a System Tray/Notification area, to name a few tools.  It is used in the live cd of GParted.  AntiX and Linux Mint also have used it.  MX Linux has a MX-Fluxbox edition.

IceWM – IceWM was also created around 1997 by Marko Maček.  It was created from scratch in C++.  It can be themed to look like Windows 95, Windows XP, Windows 7 and OS/2, among others.  It is used in Absolute Linux, AntiX and the light version of VectorLinux; openSUSE for Raspberry Pi also uses IceWM.

JWM – Joe’s Window Manager was created by Joe Wingbermuehle.  He wrote JWM in C on his Silicon Graphics Octane desktop to replace the 4Dwm that was used as the default in Irix, which itself was created by Silicon Graphics and based on AT&T’s Unix System V.

Openbox – It is a fork of Blackbox 0.65 but was completely re-written in version 3.0 and is no longer based on any Blackbox code.  It was released in 2002.  It is used in LXDE, LXQt, Lubuntu and Manjaro Linux.

Sawfish – It was released in 2000.  Sawfish, unlike the above Window Managers that used a standard config file, uses a Lisp-like scripting language for its code and configuration.  It was originally called Sawmill but the name was changed due to another software program using that name.  Sawfish was the Window Manager in GNOME 2 until the release of GNOME 2.2.

FVWM – In 1993 Robert Nation while working for the United States Department of Defense.  He started a project to reduce the memory usage and adding support for virtual desktops to the Tab Window Manager.  He is known for his terminal emulator, rxvt.  In 1994 he handed over the maintenance of FVWM to Charles Hines.  Robert’s last version was 1.24r.  Charles completely overhauled the code.  As a result, many distributions would offer each as a separate program due to peoples preferring one or the other.  In 1997 FVWM became the Window Manager for Xfce.

Window Maker – Released in 1997, Window Maker contains code from FVWM and was created to emulate NeXTSTEP OS.  It is said that using Window Maker is the closest you can come to using NeXSTEP OS without actually being on a NeXSTEP computer.  As a side note, NeXTSTEP OS was created by NeXT Computer who was started by Steve Jobs (Co-Founder of Apple).  He was forced out of Apple in 1985. In 1997 Apple bought NeXT and shortly thereafter named Jobs the interim CEO and eventually CEO of Apple once again.  When Apple needed to replace the Classic Mac OS in 1999, they open sourced NeXTSTEP version 4 to create Darwin.  With some code added from BSD and the Mach kernel, Darwin became OS X now known as MacOS.

UWM – In 1985 the Ultrix Window Manager was created by Digital Equipment Corporation (aka DEC) for its Ultrix Operating System.  Ultrix was based on version 4.2 of BSD which, in turn, was a direct descendant of the original Unix created by AT&T’s Bell Labs Research Center.  It was made the standard option in X10 Release 3 of the same year.  In 1986 X version 11 was released.  UWM was the only Window Manager that was ported to the new version.

TWM – Tab Window Manager was created by Tom LaStrange in 1987 and was his first X program.  It was originally called Tom’s Window Manager; the name was changed when the X developers at MIT adopted it in 1989 for use in X11 Release 4.  Thirty-three years later, TWM is still standard with X.org Server.  It has added title bars to the windows, and also added shaped windows and icon management.  By default the windows title bar only has the Resize button and the Iconify button.  Iconify will reduce the window to an icon.  There is no Close Window button, though one can be added via the .twmrc file.  Oddly or not, the function is described as deleting a window.  TWM was written on a monochrome Sun 3/50 using the vi text editor.  The model 3 was a fast computer with an amazing 15.7 MHz Motorola 68020 processor and 4 MB of ram.

Other bits of trivia are:

The Xerox Alto created by Xerox PARC in 1973 was the first computer that was specifically designed to use a graphical user interface (aka GUI).  The Alto used a Stacking Window Manager.

Both Microsoft and Apple used Stacking Window Managers.  For Apple it was the Classic Mac OS in 1984 using the QuickDraw 2D Graphics Library; Microsoft used one in Windows 2 through Windows XP which spanned from 1987 till 2001.

GEM (Graphics Environment Engine) was created by Digital Research in 1985; it was a stacking style GUI for use on their DR DOS (similar to MS DOS) and for Atari to use on their ST series of computers.  Incidentally, Digital Research also created the CP/M OS in 1974 which was similar to MS DOS.  Apple sued Digital Research due to it being too similar to Mac OS.  The terms of the settlement included having DRI remove the stacking capabilities.

Tiling and Dynamic

I am combining the two because Dynamic can use both Stacking and Tiling features.  In some cases the stacking needs to be enabled; in other cases it is the window management features of stacking that are used.

Tiling Window Managers are completely different from the Stacking and Compositing Window Managers.  The windows are mutually non-overlapping frames.  It is very common to only have the frame visible, with no title bar or buttons to click.  Actually, a mouse is not even used in most traditional Tiling Window Managers.  By that I mean you don’t use the mouse to interact with the Window Manager, but you still use the mouse in applications.  The first window is opened full screen, then the second is half of the screen.  The third is one half size frame lengthwise on one side of the screen, with the two other frames splitting the other half of the screen.  Once a fourth window is opened, you have 4 equally sized windows.  The process of halving the screen continues.

The operation is heavily into keyboard commands.  In some Tiling Window Managers, the keyboard is the only way to interact with the windows.  This presents an obvious hurdle for people switching to a Tiling Window Manager.  The first time you use a Tiling Window Manager is reminiscent of the Vi/VIM meme where you can’t quit Vi or VIM.  If you are not familiar with that,  Vi is a terminal based text editor, and Vim is an updated version of Vi.  It has two modes: Command Mode (to save, cut, paste, exit, etc) and Insert Mode (to type text into the file).  Unless you know how to change modes and then know the command to exit, you will be stuck in Vi/VIM forever!  How is that reminiscent?  You are basically presented with a similar black screen and all you have is the keyboard commands to interact with.

Like Stacking Window Managers, Tiling Window Managers date back to the early days of the original Unix OS.  Xerox PARC released CEDAR in 1982, the first windowing system using a Tiled Window Manager.

Here is a brief list of Tiling and Dynamic Window Managers:

  • dwm
  • xmonad
  • awesome
  • i3
  • ratpoison

Some notable history of the above listed Window Managers:

dwm – Created in 2006.  In order to change configuration options.  You must edit the source code and re-compile.  Unlike other Tiling Window Managers, dwm allows moving and resizing the windows with a mouse.  It is a keyboard-driven interface.  Using dmenu, you would type in an executable name, which will show matching names thus allowing you to launch that program.  Its source code has been forked to create many other Tiling Window Managers, such as the Awesome Window Manager and xmonad.

xmonad – Created in 2007.  It is written in Haskell, which is a functional programming language.  Since it was forked from dwm, it adds per-workspace layouts, tiling reflection, state preservation, layout mirroring and per-screen status bars.  xmonad also has support for GNOME: one big change is in the configuration.  You modify a configuration file and reload it while the Window Manager is running.

Awesome – It was created in 2007.  It would be considered a Dynamic Window Manager, as it allows for stacking windows (overlapping windows).  Awesome uses the Lua Scripting Language.  You can edit the config file, save changes and restart Awesome, with no need to recompile as you would with dwm.  Awesome can be fully operated by way of keyboard commands.  By default, a menu panel is available for you to click on with your mouse. This panel can be removed as desired.  There is a keyboard command superkey + s which will show all of your commands.  The superkey is the key on the left side of the keyboard between the ctrl and alt keys.  Awesome is generally suggested as a person’s first dive into Tiling Window Managers.

i3 – It was created in 2009 completely from scratch.  i3 supports Tiling, Stacking and Tabbed Window layouts.  You configure i3 with a plain text file.  Window management is controlled by the user.  You can resize, split vertically or horizontally the windows.  It also can use dmenu which is also used in dwm.

ratpoison – Created in 2000 by Shawn Betts.  The name reflects the goal of not using the mouse; in fact you can’t use a mouse at all.  It is 100% keyboard driven and has a very minimalist design, with no fancy graphics and no window decorations.  All you have is a frame around the window.  The thinking is, why have something to click on when you don’t use a mouse?

Most of these are good examples that show the Open Source spirit.  One person creates something: other people modify it in their vision.

  • Questions
    • For those that are unfamiliar, what is the function of a window manager?  Why would someone want to use an alternate window manager in Linux Desktop?
  • Windows Manager vs Desktop Environment
    • Window Manager – controls placement and appearance of “windows” on top of X.org (more widely used in Linux compared to XFree86) X-windows implementation. Can be very barebones or more featureful.
    • Desktop Environment – Builds on top of a Window Manager and includes a more                                                                             robust user experience from setup, tuning, hardware management/integration, file and network utilities, etc.
  • Display Managers – What controls the login to your choice of Window Manager or Desktop Environment. Handles the transition from startup to account login, executing X.org and launching Window Manager or Desktop Environment.
  • Window Manager Examples:
    • Twm – tab window manager – very very basic, used to be default in most distributions when you fired up X for the first time without any further configuration.
      • Used to be packaged with X.org and probably is an optional xorg package
    • Blackbox, Openbox, Fluxbox – Both openbox and fluxbox forked from blackbox.
      • Blackbox: This fork is most up to date https://github.com/bbidulock/blackboxwm
      • Fluxbox: http://fluxbox.org
      • Openbox is used in LXDE and LXQt – http://openbox.org/wiki/Main_Page
    • Icewm – Ice Window Manager – https://ice-wm.org/
    • WindowMaker – Derived from GNUStep https://www.windowmaker.org/
    • FVWM – https://github.com/fvwmorg/fvwm3 
    • Compiz – http://www.compiz.org/ hit the heights of popularity for it’s OpenGL effects.
    • Awesome – tiling window manager https://awesomewm.org/
    • Ratpoison – tiling window manager https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/
    • SawFish – Used to be Gnome’s Windowmanager
    • KWin – KDE Plasma window manager https://userbase.kde.org/KWin
    • GnomeShell – Gnome’s window manager maybe https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell
  • Desktop Environment
  • Leo
    • Seems to me the biggest difference between full desktop managers, floating window managers and tiling window managers is the amount the user is willing to interact with the mouse.
      • Thoughts?
    • I’ve been getting the hang of using the tiling WM i3 by way of Regolith.
    • There is a steep learning curve at the beginning. Once you have the important hotkeys memorized, things get way better. Cheat sheets help, but the speed doesn’t come till you have them down.

Removing i3-gaps gaps to give yourself more screen real estate. Especially handy for laptops with lower resolutions.

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER: 

  • Jack

https://www.ostechnix.com/how-to-rename-multiple-files-at-once-in-linux/

  • Michael
  • Caramale on Twitter

CHECK THIS OUT! 

  • Dale

Eye strain can be very painful and irritating.  What I use is Redshift.  It is available for most Linux distributions.  Some DE’s have it built-in to the DE.  I believe Windows 10 also has a similar feature.  What it does is change the color temperature of the monitor.  By default most monitors use 6500k.  The k is for Kelvin, a scientific way of measuring light among others.

5000k – 6500k is Daylight.  3000k is Fluorescent. 2700k is a Incandescent Light Bulb.  2200k is early Sun rise or a lantern.  Just to name a few.  

During the evening hours and overnight.  You can set Redshift to use 2700k at sunset and 5000k or 6500k after sunrise.  It can automate this as well.  You have the option of setting your sunrise and sunset times manually.  The other option is for it to detect your location or manually entering your zip code.  Everyone I have shown this to complained about their monitor having a red hue.  The problem always is the light they are using in the room.  If your light is at 5000k or there is sunlight coming through a window.  So yes your monitor will have a red hue.  If your light was using 2700k and your monitor is using 2700k.  You will not notice the difference.  

The solution is to use SceneSwitch light bulbs.  They are LED light bulbs that can change from 5000k to 2700k to 2200k.  They are available from the various Home Improvement Stores for about $7 per bulb.  Amazon also has them but in packs of 4 or more.  I personally use the Phillips brand.  They use 9.5w of electricity.

How it works is very simple.  It uses a standard Incandescent Light Bulb socket.  It even is in the same shape so you can continue using a lamp shade that attaches to the bulb.  You turn the lamp on.  If you want to change the color temperature.  Just turn the lamp on.  Once it turns on, turn it off again.  Do that until you see the color temperature you want to use.  Once you have the color temperature  you want.  Just leave the light on for a few seconds to let it save that setting.  You are now done.  It will remember this setting the next time it is turned on.

Everyone that I have shown these SceneSwitch light bulbs to has loved them.  Especially in the morning.  You can set the light to 2200k the night before.  When you wake up.  You will not be blinded by a bright harsh light.  Personally I have noticed a positive change in my eyes after using these lights for a couple years.

http://jonls.dk/redshift/ 

https://www.lighting.philips.com/main/prof/led-lamps-and-tubes/led-bulbs/led-sceneswitch/929001263204_EU/product 

  • Moss

Ventoy, Ventoy, Ventoy

You know that I love checking out various distros, and that I keep a box of USB sticks with various distros ready to go in case I need to change something or someone I know would like to try Linux. There are 10 color-coded USB sticks and 5 other sticks in my box.

I have been looking for a way to use one large USB stick to install several distros. Either due to my lack of skill, bad software, or my hardware, I have failed to be able use at least 3 different multiboot apps I’ve tried.

I mentioned that in the Linux Mint Telegram group, which is nice in that it includes a lot of users in India. My friends there told me about Ventoy, of which I had not heard a whisper among my American/UK friends. (Of course, since that time, 2 or 3 other podcasts have covered it.) So I looked into it. 

There is a GUI version for Windows, but there is a version for Linux. You install it by downloading and extracting a .tar.gz file and following instructions. Not all sets of instructions are complete, so we’re going to try to help here.

You’ll probably want to create a Ventoy directory and extract the files there to keep things easy. You then open a Terminal and CD to the Ventoy directory. And then you run this command for a simple Ventoy stick:

sudo sh Ventoy2Disk.sh -I /dev/sdx

…where “sdx” needs to be changed to the address of your USB stick, probably sdc.  The complete command, with switches, is:

sudo sh Ventoy2Disk.sh { -i | -I | -u } /dev/sdx

(from https://www.ventoy.net/en/doc_start.html )

I got lucky; I got Ventoy loaded to my Memorex USB 3.1 64Gb stick on the first try. And there is nothing but fun from here on in. You don’t have to extract ISOs, just copy the whole ISO to the stick. When you go to use it, you get a graphical menu for Ventoy with all available distros listed. Select which one to load, and Ventoy does the extraction itself.

Installing Ventoy formats the stick as exFAT, so you can’t add Ventoy to a stick you’re already using without losing the files on it; however, after installing Ventoy to the stick, you can use the stick to store other files and access them.

Not every ISO has been approved for Ventoy. I found I cannot use Feren OS. But I can use the latest BionicPup64, Pearl, any Ubuntu or Mint, SuSE… Calculate Linux can be installed using Ventoy but cannot be run as a live disk (also true of a few other distros, determined by the distro, not Ventoy). But here’s an extra thing: You can also install Windows ISO from the same Ventoy stick as your Linux ISOs. (Don’t tell anyone, but I have Win 7, 8.1 and 10 ISOs downloaded…)

For some distros, you can even set them up, add and delete programs, and the ISO gets saved with those changes — this is called “persistence”, and you can check the Ventoy site for more information on what has been tested, as well as for lots more information on this app. Caution: the devs of Ventoy are not well-versed in English, so checking other sites may be helpful as well, such as https://www.ostechnix.com/how-to-create-multiboot-usb-drives-with-ventoy-in-linux/

My current feeling is that I should have 3 sticks — one for Live ISOs, one for Install-only ISOs, and one for Persistent ISOs which I have modified.

I heartily recommend Ventoy with no reservation.

Announcements:

The next show will be Sunday, the 28th of June at 7PM UTC, 2PM US Central Time, 8PM British Summer Time

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4488 mintCast 336.5 – Taking Control (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-336-5-taking-control-mp3/ Wed, 10 Jun 2020 05:04:19 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4453 And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions
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In our Innards section, we talk to Erik the Engineer

And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions

Linux Innards – Erik Lietz

What was your first Linux experience? 

I’ve always been looking at non-Microsoft systems. Started with Apple IIe and then Macs while young. Linux specifically I’ve had a couple of them… In college we had Sun Microsystems – Solaris in the computer labs, running StarOffice. Later in college my roommate had RedHat – but he lost me when he said “look I can change the speed on the CPU fan”. 

Then running only Windows until early 2019 when researching what to do with Windows 7 end of life.  Windows 10 was not an option – update during client meeting.

What was the very first Linux distro you ran?

Zorin OS, which was advertised as a Windows 7 replacement. 

  • Went through the distro search
    • Ubuntu
    • the Ubuntu flavors, particularly MATE
    • Elementary
    • Mint

What’s a typical workflow for you entail?

  • Office documents – LibreOffice for word processing and spreadsheets
  • PDF editing – almost all of our final products to clients, regulators, contractors are all submitted electronically
  • Telegram – internal communication, internal teams
  • Email – thunderbird
  • Design programs – 
    • AutoCAD
    • Carlson 3D
    • Google Earth
    • Government programs
  • Zoom – client review meetings w/ CAD designs

Tell us more about your engineering setup. Why Linux Mint?

Engineering Business

Mint – familiarity with the desktop, and it just works – reliability 

Does Linux do everything you need in a system?

  • No, unfortunately, but it is close and getting closer
    • CAD and 3D design software is not well represented on Linux. 
    • Our accounting software is web browser based, but limited to Internet Explorer or Edge due to programming. 
  • More traditional businesses software it would be quite easy and reliable
    • especially if you mainly use Office type documents

Do you do any Linux Gaming?

No I don’t. I don’t have much free time outside of the business and family. 

Do you contribute to the community?

I’m active on the mintCast Telegram group. Posting on the Mint Forum. I had one laptop which had a misbehaving WiFi card. I was able to use the forums to get it fixed but it wouldn’t stick after a reboot, but went back and forth with some of the forums to get it to work for good. I have done some beta testing on LMDE 4 and some of the Ubuntu 20.04 releases.      

Community as a whole – AWESOME!  

Is there any piece of Linux and open source software, other than a browser, you could not live without?

  • Linux software would be MasterPDF, which is a competitor to Adobe Acrobat. 
  • Open source is BitWarden, I have way too many passwords to keep track of and BitWarden is by far my most favorite password manager. 

How has your experience been using LibreOffice?  Have you encountered issues with compatibility for MS Office docs?

I and my staff have really liked using LibreOffice.  

  • Still save documents in Microsoft format for compatibility outside of the office
  • LibreOffice actually has more flexibility with how documents are setup, appearance and formatting
  • Automatic numbering in Writer is awkward, but much less than in MS Word
  • The biggest issue we have is with Macros in Calc – government produced design spreadsheets 

Closing thoughts for the audience, just for the folks that are sick and tired of Windows and want something faster and more secure.

Linux allowed us to take back our IT from third parties. The stability of Linux and allowing for you to control updates is a game changer. 

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Michael

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy7Kah3WzqrEjsuvhT46fr28Q11oa5ZoI

  • Leo’s response
  • Jim Daldry

sudo chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf 

    • Leo’s Response
  • Bill
  • Mike F
  • John Wallis (2)

https://itsfoss.com/fix-no-wireless-network-ubuntu/

# Configuration file for setting network variables. Please note these settings
# override /etc/sysctl.conf and /etc/sysctl.d. If you prefer to use
# /etc/sysctl.conf, please adjust IPT_SYSCTL in /etc/default/ufw. See
# Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt in the kernel source code for more
# information.

Added the Martians entries to /etc/ufw/sysctl.conf.

  • Leo’s Response

CHECK THIS OUT!

Parted Magic – is a live Linux disc partitioning and secure wiping OS, Although it is Open source since late 2013 they moved to a paid model to support its development you can buy a unsupported iso for $11 and install it as many times as you like, if you want updates for 12 months a subscription will cost you $39 although I’m unclear how many iso’s you can use at once with this purchase

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, June 14, 2020. That’s 8PM British Summer Time.

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4453 mintCast 336.5 – Taking Control https://mintcast.org/mintcast-336-5-taking-control/ Wed, 10 Jun 2020 04:49:10 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4446 And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]>

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In our Innards section, we talk to Erik the Engineer

And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions

Linux Innards – Erik Lietz

What was your first Linux experience? 

I’ve always been looking at non-Microsoft systems. Started with Apple IIe and then Macs while young. Linux specifically I’ve had a couple of them… In college we had Sun Microsystems – Solaris in the computer labs, running StarOffice. Later in college my roommate had RedHat – but he lost me when he said “look I can change the speed on the CPU fan”. 

Then running only Windows until early 2019 when researching what to do with Windows 7 end of life.  Windows 10 was not an option – update during client meeting.

What was the very first Linux distro you ran?

Zorin OS, which was advertised as a Windows 7 replacement. 

  • Went through the distro search
    • Ubuntu
    • the Ubuntu flavors, particularly MATE
    • Elementary
    • Mint

What’s a typical workflow for you entail?

  • Office documents – LibreOffice for word processing and spreadsheets
  • PDF editing – almost all of our final products to clients, regulators, contractors are all submitted electronically
  • Telegram – internal communication, internal teams
  • Email – thunderbird
  • Design programs – 
    • AutoCAD
    • Carlson 3D
    • Google Earth
    • Government programs
  • Zoom – client review meetings w/ CAD designs

Tell us more about your engineering setup. Why Linux Mint?

Engineering Business

Mint – familiarity with the desktop, and it just works – reliability 

Does Linux do everything you need in a system?

  • No, unfortunately, but it is close and getting closer
    • CAD and 3D design software is not well represented on Linux. 
    • Our accounting software is web browser based, but limited to Internet Explorer or Edge due to programming. 
  • More traditional businesses software it would be quite easy and reliable
    • especially if you mainly use Office type documents

Do you do any Linux Gaming?

No I don’t. I don’t have much free time outside of the business and family. 

Do you contribute to the community?

I’m active on the mintCast Telegram group. Posting on the Mint Forum. I had one laptop which had a misbehaving WiFi card. I was able to use the forums to get it fixed but it wouldn’t stick after a reboot, but went back and forth with some of the forums to get it to work for good. I have done some beta testing on LMDE 4 and some of the Ubuntu 20.04 releases.      

Community as a whole – AWESOME!  

Is there any piece of Linux and open source software, other than a browser, you could not live without?

  • Linux software would be MasterPDF, which is a competitor to Adobe Acrobat. 
  • Open source is BitWarden, I have way too many passwords to keep track of and BitWarden is by far my most favorite password manager. 

How has your experience been using LibreOffice?  Have you encountered issues with compatibility for MS Office docs?

I and my staff have really liked using LibreOffice.  

  • Still save documents in Microsoft format for compatibility outside of the office
  • LibreOffice actually has more flexibility with how documents are setup, appearance and formatting
  • Automatic numbering in Writer is awkward, but much less than in MS Word
  • The biggest issue we have is with Macros in Calc – government produced design spreadsheets 

Closing thoughts for the audience, just for the folks that are sick and tired of Windows and want something faster and more secure.

Linux allowed us to take back our IT from third parties. The stability of Linux and allowing for you to control updates is a game changer. 

Vibrations from the Ether

  • Michael

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy7Kah3WzqrEjsuvhT46fr28Q11oa5ZoI

  • Leo’s response
  • Jim Daldry

sudo chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf 

    • Leo’s Response
  • Bill
  • Mike F
  • John Wallis (2)

https://itsfoss.com/fix-no-wireless-network-ubuntu/

# Configuration file for setting network variables. Please note these settings
# override /etc/sysctl.conf and /etc/sysctl.d. If you prefer to use
# /etc/sysctl.conf, please adjust IPT_SYSCTL in /etc/default/ufw. See
# Documentation/networking/ip-sysctl.txt in the kernel source code for more
# information.

Added the Martians entries to /etc/ufw/sysctl.conf.

  • Leo’s Response

CHECK THIS OUT!

Parted Magic – is a live Linux disc partitioning and secure wiping OS, Although it is Open source since late 2013 they moved to a paid model to support its development you can buy a unsupported iso for $11 and install it as many times as you like, if you want updates for 12 months a subscription will cost you $39 although I’m unclear how many iso’s you can use at once with this purchase

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, June 14, 2020. That’s 8PM British Summer Time.

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4446 mintCast 335.5 – Big Ol’ Lug https://mintcast.org/mintcast-335-5-big-ol-lug/ Tue, 26 May 2020 04:55:12 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4421 And finally, our listener feedback
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we’re making good on the promise to include more community.

And finally, our listener feedback

Linux Innards: 

Community Interview: Scott

When was the first time you ever saw or noticed Linux? 

  • Started looking back in 2015, but never had the guts to do it! I believe I got intrigued with Linux when I started watching Mr. Robot. Fantastic Show!

That calls for the old question: ASL?

  • Massachusetts (Boston area)

Did you use it yourself at that time, or just see someone else using it?

  • I did a lot of research and looked at a lot of the Top 5, Top 10 Distros Around 2016. I never saw it used, just a lot of reading online. A friend of mine said they used Ubuntu a long time ago

Do you remember the distribution? 

  • Ubuntu, Kali, Arch, Fedora, Linux Mint were some of the ones I read about.

What was your very first Linux distro?

  • I installed Mint as a dual boot with WIndows. The main driver for installing was when I had to Upgrade Win 7 to WIn 10 and it took like 3-4 hours to complete. That was the last straw.
  • I have only used Mint as a daily driver for my home laptop. I have a few Pi’s at the house with Raspbian. I have done a camera system with one, a headless Minecraft server for the kids…. Lots of steps to install that, but it worked like a charm

What’s a typical workflow for you entail?

  • If you are talking about how I maintain the system, I typically use the terminal, because it’s cool 🙂
  • Sudo apt-get update. Then upgrade, then autoclean, then autoremove  <try sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade – Moss>

Does Linux do everything you need in a system?

  • It does. I mainly surf the web, have played old classics like Baldur’s Gate on my PC and got Ultima I, II, III working in WINE, brings me back to the old days of my Apple IIe (I have played that in the old days as well ICEWind day. My Wife and I would sit at the PC together playing BGII
  • Gaming, I don’t do much anymore except browser ones, mostly strategy like Ogame, just to kill time.
  • I use LibreOffice, not hard to use compared to Office, does what I need.
  • Use a VPN, still using PIA 

Do you contribute at all?

  • For bugs, no, never really ran into one that was not hardware related, but able to work through it.
  • I have lurked on the Forums and done some posts to help but mostly ask questions
  • Once a year typically donate to LinuxMint
  • I have converted some friends to using Mint, my in-laws use it on both of their desktops. Mother-in-law complained the all-in-one HP she had was slow, 15+ min to boot. Now It boots in 45 sec and the touch screen works with Mint.
  • Have about 6 machines at home with Mint on them.

Is there any piece of open source software, other than a browser, you could not live without?

  • Typically, I will adapt to something I need, example, I used to use Canon DPP, Darkroom works good enough
  • I do miss having my Stock trading software I used to use, but i can deal with a web browser now, no issues

Closing thoughts for the audience, just for the folks that are sick and tired of Windows and want something faster and more secure.

  • If you surf the web, pay bills online, use social media Linux is for you.
  • The cardinal rule I live by now, Don’t spend money on a new machine, take that old machine, buy an SSD for 20 bucks, and install Mint… you will have a brand new PC! If you don’t have a machine, and get one from a friend that doesn’t need it, or buy a used one, you can have a great machine that is stable for your day to day needs.

Vibrations from the Ether

Bill

Erik

Scott T.

Basically lubuntu.me is the official site and one individual is keeping lubuntu.net going,

confusing users. A link to the mailing list that discusses it is here:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/lubuntu-users/2016-August/thread.html

John Wallis

Henrik Hemrin

Michael

Check This Out!

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, May 31, 2020. That’s 8PM British Summer Time.

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4421 mintCast 335.5 – Big Ol’ LUG (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-335-5-big-ol-lug-mp3/ Tue, 26 May 2020 04:50:15 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4423 And finally, our listener feedback
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we’re making good on the promise to include more community.

And finally, our listener feedback

Linux Innards: 

Community Interview: Scott

When was the first time you ever saw or noticed Linux? 

  • Started looking back in 2015, but never had the guts to do it! I believe I got intrigued with Linux when I started watching Mr. Robot. Fantastic Show!

That calls for the old question: ASL?

  • Massachusetts (Boston area)

Did you use it yourself at that time, or just see someone else using it?

  • I did a lot of research and looked at a lot of the Top 5, Top 10 Distros Around 2016. I never saw it used, just a lot of reading online. A friend of mine said they used Ubuntu a long time ago

Do you remember the distribution? 

  • Ubuntu, Kali, Arch, Fedora, Linux Mint were some of the ones I read about.

What was your very first Linux distro?

  • I installed Mint as a dual boot with WIndows. The main driver for installing was when I had to Upgrade Win 7 to WIn 10 and it took like 3-4 hours to complete. That was the last straw.
  • I have only used Mint as a daily driver for my home laptop. I have a few Pi’s at the house with Raspbian. I have done a camera system with one, a headless Minecraft server for the kids…. Lots of steps to install that, but it worked like a charm

What’s a typical workflow for you entail?

  • If you are talking about how I maintain the system, I typically use the terminal, because it’s cool 🙂
  • Sudo apt-get update. Then upgrade, then autoclean, then autoremove  <try sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade – Moss>

Does Linux do everything you need in a system?

  • It does. I mainly surf the web, have played old classics like Baldur’s Gate on my PC and got Ultima I, II, III working in WINE, brings me back to the old days of my Apple IIe (I have played that in the old days as well ICEWind day. My Wife and I would sit at the PC together playing BGII
  • Gaming, I don’t do much anymore except browser ones, mostly strategy like Ogame, just to kill time.
  • I use LibreOffice, not hard to use compared to Office, does what I need.
  • Use a VPN, still using PIA 

Do you contribute at all?

  • For bugs, no, never really ran into one that was not hardware related, but able to work through it.
  • I have lurked on the Forums and done some posts to help but mostly ask questions
  • Once a year typically donate to LinuxMint
  • I have converted some friends to using Mint, my in-laws use it on both of their desktops. Mother-in-law complained the all-in-one HP she had was slow, 15+ min to boot. Now It boots in 45 sec and the touch screen works with Mint.
  • Have about 6 machines at home with Mint on them.

Is there any piece of open source software, other than a browser, you could not live without?

  • Typically, I will adapt to something I need, example, I used to use Canon DPP, Darkroom works good enough
  • I do miss having my Stock trading software I used to use, but i can deal with a web browser now, no issues

Closing thoughts for the audience, just for the folks that are sick and tired of Windows and want something faster and more secure.

  • If you surf the web, pay bills online, use social media Linux is for you.
  • The cardinal rule I live by now, Don’t spend money on a new machine, take that old machine, buy an SSD for 20 bucks, and install Mint… you will have a brand new PC! If you don’t have a machine, and get one from a friend that doesn’t need it, or buy a used one, you can have a great machine that is stable for your day to day needs.

Vibrations from the Ether

Bill

Erik

Scott T.

Basically lubuntu.me is the official site and one individual is keeping lubuntu.net going,

confusing users. A link to the mailing list that discusses it is here:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/lubuntu-users/2016-August/thread.html

John Wallis

Henrik Hemrin

Michael

Check This Out!

Announcements:

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, May 31, 2020. That’s 8PM British Summer Time.

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4423