Xfce – mintCast https://mintcast.org The podcast by the Linux Mint community for all users of Linux Sat, 16 Nov 2024 02:43:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1 https://mintcast.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/cropped-small-logo-32x32.png Xfce – mintCast https://mintcast.org 32 32 164426984 450 – Crumbling Foundations https://mintcast.org/450-crumbling-foundations/ Sat, 16 Nov 2024 02:43:09 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7278 First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – October 2024, Xfce 4.20 Pre1 Pre-Release Published For Testing, KDE's New Distro, Mozilla Foundation crumbles as third of staff cast off

In security and privacy: We are secure in our ignorance

Then in our Wanderings: Bill upgrades fast, and breaks things, Joe fixes even more things, Moss goes paperwhite, and Majid headbangs.

In our Innards section: We talk digital Hygene

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

]]> First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – October 2024, Xfce 4.20 Pre1 Pre-Release Published For Testing, KDE’s New Distro, Mozilla Foundation crumbles as third of staff cast off

In security and privacy: We are secure in our ignorance

Then in our Wanderings: Bill upgrades fast, and breaks things, Joe fixes even more things, Moss goes paperwhite, and Majid headbangs.

In our Innards section: We talk digital Hygene

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

Full Show Notes Here

The News:


Mint Monthly News – October 2024


Xfce 4.20 Pre1 Pre-Release Published For Testing


KDE’s New Distro: Btrfs-Based, Immutable Linux OS, with Flatpak and Snap


Mozilla Foundation crumbles as third of staff cast off

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

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

]]> 7278 448 – The Archive Is Breached! https://mintcast.org/448-the-archive-is-breached/ Thu, 17 Oct 2024 10:06:37 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=7220 First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – September, Xfce 4.20 creeps toward Wayland support, Archive.org is breached, Arch and Valve team up, WWWFoundation packs it in, More WordPress news, even MORE WordPress News, and Google adds Linux apps to future Android versions

Then in our Wanderings: Bill connects with the younger generation, Joe is still fixing things, Moss whines, and Majid folds some more

]]> First up in the news: Mint Monthly News – September, Xfce 4.20 creeps toward Wayland support, Archive.org is breached, Arch and Valve team up, WWWFoundation packs it in, More WordPress news, even MORE WordPress News, and Google adds Linux apps to future Android versions

Then in our Wanderings: Bill connects with the younger generation, Joe is still fixing things, Moss whines, and Majid folds some more

Full Show Notes Here

The News:


Mint Monthly News – September, 2024


Xfce 4.20 creeps toward Wayland support


Archive.org, a repository of the history of the Internet, has a data breach


Arch Linux and Valve team up to make Steam gaming even better


WWW Foundation packs it in


159 employees are leaving Automattic as CEO’s fight with WP Engine escalates


WordPress.org’s latest move involves taking control of a WP Engine plugin


Google is preparing to let you run Linux apps on Android, just like Chrome OS


KDE neon upgrades to 24.04.1 Ubuntu base

Contact Info:

Special Thanks To:

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

]]> 7220 394 – With music on our side to break the old hard drives https://mintcast.org/394-with-music-on-our-side-to-break-the-old-hard-drives/ Fri, 26 Aug 2022 15:20:07 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5598 In security and privacy, Discord and your passwords are pythoned, and hard drives apparently have a taste in music
Then in our Wanderings, Joe plays with his handheld, Bill is setting up a new server, Moss skips the assault and gets a couple batteries, and Norbert has had done some things.
Download
]]> 1:25 The News
16:15 Security and Privacy
26:03 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:22:59 Housekeeping and Announcements

First up in the news, The Kernel gets a bump, LibreOffice adds a point, Android 13 is out if you have a Pixel, and Gnome has a birthday,

In security and privacy, Discord and your passwords are pythoned, and hard drives apparently have a taste in music

Then in our Wanderings, Joe plays with his handheld, Bill is setting up a new server, Moss skips the assault and gets a couple batteries, and Norbert has had done some things.

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

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert, Londoner, Tony H, and all others for our audio editing
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 5598 393.5 – $HOME Decor https://mintcast.org/393-5-home-decor/ Thu, 18 Aug 2022 17:23:55 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5591 Download
]]> 0:48 Linux Innards
1:02:52  Check This Out
1:03:37 Housekeeping and Announcements

In our Innards section we discuss the changes we usually make to the systems and desktop environments we use to fit our workflows and to make them feel like home.

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions

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

Check This Out

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 5591 393 – Quantum of Solus https://mintcast.org/393-quantum-of-solus/ Fri, 12 Aug 2022 23:38:08 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5584 In security and privacy, Sale of over a billion Chinese users’ data found, DuckDuckGo is (finally) blocking Microsoft trackers, and Linux 6.0 to have run-time verification for running on safety critical systems
Then in our Wanderings, Bill is hearing things, Moss is losing power, Joe is soldering on, and Norbert is taming the fox
Download
]]> 1:12 The News
16:00 Security and Privacy
49:28 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:30:48 Housekeeping and Announcements

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

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

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

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

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 5584 392 – Return of the Trampolines https://mintcast.org/392-the-return-of-the-trampolines/ Fri, 05 Aug 2022 23:57:37 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5559 In security and privacy, the Retbleed speculative exploit is more than just speculation, but the kernel team already have a fix, and Lightning Framework flashes our way;
Then in our Wanderings, Bill is back from Pennsylvania again and again, Norbert polishes his laptop, Moss is doing the Makulu Shift, Joe is working the mods, Josh T is fixing watches, and Tom is channeling.
Download
]]> 2:30 The News
29:46 Security and Privacy
42:06 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:30:26 Housekeeping and Announcements

First up in the news: Vanessa is almost here, Xfce flirts with Wayland, GNOME is touching up the touchscreen experience, and STAR protects data on Brave browsers;

In security and privacy, the Retbleed speculative exploit is more than just speculation, but the kernel team already have a fix, and Lightning Framework flashes our way;

Then in our Wanderings, Bill is back from Pennsylvania again and again, Norbert polishes his laptop, Moss is doing the Makulu Shift, Joe is working the mods, Josh T is fixing watches, and Tom is channeling.

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

The News

Security and Privacy Update

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 5559 387.5 – If you were to build a distro… https://mintcast.org/387-5-if-you-were-to-build-a-distro/ Wed, 15 Jun 2022 22:02:23 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5506 Download
]]> 00:33 Linux Innards
33:47 Vibrations From the Ether
42:33 Announcements

In our Innards section we discuss how we would build our own distro

And finally, the feedback and a couple of suggestions.

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

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 5506 383.5 – Bootloader Boot Camp https://mintcast.org/383-5-bootloader-boot-camp/ Sun, 12 Jun 2022 01:46:13 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5469 Download
]]> 0:32 Linux Innards
56:54 Check This Out
1:01:28 Announcements

In our Innards section we discuss tips and tricks around GRUB, as well as a couple alternatives.

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

Linux Innards

GRUB bootloader, troubleshooting, tips & tricks, alternatives

Lines in the standard configuration file for Grub:

  • GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
    • the length of time in seconds that you will see the bootloader menu
  • GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=“$(sed ‘s, release .*$,,g’ /etc/system-release)”
    • extracts the release information from the /etc/system-release file and makes names in the grub menu
  • GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
    • can be used to set the default kernel that is booted, usually the most recent kernel but you can change it to a later number instead of 0 and that will be the default one to get loaded.  If a new kernel is installed then your list is iterated
  • GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=
    • not normally used, but if set to true, then every time you select a different kernel at boot then that will be the new default instead of just a one time load
  • GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
    • Submenus are used to pick things like a testing kernel or a safe mode kernel.  Setting to false gets rid of this
  • GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=”console”
    • can be used to redirect output to another terminal.  I have never used this
  • GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”rd.lvm.lv=fedora_fedora25vm/root rd.lvm.lv=fedora_fedora25vm/swap rd.lvm.lv=fedora_fedora25vm/usr rhgb quiet”
    • contains the cmd line arguments that will be passed to the kernel.  Will be used for all installed kernels.  Removing quiet gives terminal output to help diagnose issues in boot sequence
  • GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY=”true”
    • Set to true or false to add recovery entries

Source: https://opensource.com/article/17/3/introduction-grub2-configuration-linux#:~:text=GRUB%20stands%20for%20GRand%20Unified,it%20is%20no%20longer%20needed.

  • That is a broad overview of a standard grub setup.
  • GRUB troubleshooting
    • When grub can’t see any of your kernels and dumps you to a grub rescue prompt, it means that grub is working but it can’t find an actual linux distro anywhere.
    • You will need to find the vmlinuz and initrd files, which are usually in /boot.
    • Then enter the commands:
      • set root=*the drive you found*
      • linux “path to vmlinuz” root=/dev/”where its mounted”
      • initrd “path to initrd”
      • boot
    • Your system should boot.  This is a one time fix and you will need to reinstall grub before rebooting or you will need to do it all again.  You can do this using sudo grub-install /dev/”where its mounted”
      • With any manual changes to your grub always remember to use sudo update-grub
      • You may also need ‘echo GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false|sudo tee -a /etc/default/grub && sudo update-grub’
      • In order to re enable os prober
    • Londoner sent this video from “Thor” for fixing a Linux kernel panic, on Manjaro and Endeavour installations on a multiboot system with Mint controlling GRUB.
  • systemd-boot (alternative boot menu for UEFI systems)
    • These instructions are for replacing GRUB with systemd-boot.
    • First, execute the command “sudo bootctl install”
      • This will copy the systemd-boot boot loader to the ESP: on a x64 architecture system /usr/lib/systemd/boot/efi/systemd-bootx64.efi will be copied to esp/EFI/systemd/systemd-bootx64.efi and esp/EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI, and systemd-boot will be set as the default EFI application.
      • If you have your EFI system partition mounted somewhere else other than the boot partition, you can specify these locations by executing the “sudo bootctl –esp-path=/efi –boot-path=/boot install” command.
    • Next, you need to enable the systemd service which will update the bootloader if and when there is an update to the systemd stack.
      • Execute “sudo bootctl update”
    • There are two types of tiny config files you have to write to get this to work, and on a single boot system there will only be two files total. You have to write a loader.conf, and an entry file for each operating system. As I said – if you only have one operating system, you’ll only have one entry file.
    • In the  esp/loader/ directory, create the file loader.conf and add the following:
      • default  name of your operating system.conf
      • timeout  4
      • console-mode max
      • editor   no
    • In the esp/loader/entries/ folder, add the file name of your operating system.conf and add the following:
      • title – operating system name. Required.
      • version – kernel version, shown only when multiple entries with the same title exist. Optional.
      • machine-id – machine identifier from /etc/machine-id, shown only when multiple entries with the same title and version exist. Optional.
      • efi – EFI program to start, relative to your ESP (esp); e.g. /vmlinuz-linux. Either this parameter or linux (see below) is required.
      • options – space-separated command line options to pass to the EFI program or kernel parameters. Optional, but you will need at least root=dev if booting Linux. This parameter can be omitted if the root partition is assigned the correct Root Partition Type GUID as defined in
  • An example of a well written entry configuration would look like this:
    • title   Linux Mint
    • linux   /vmlinuz-linux
    • initrd  /intel-ucode.img
    • initrd  /initramfs-linux.img
    • options root=”/dev/sda1″ rw quiet
  • Once these files are written, you can safely remove GRUB from your system, and it may be a good idea to delete the GRUB directory from the EFI system this way it removes possible confusion when telling the UEFI what boot entry to load.
  • As I said, consult online documentation and be sure you understand what you are doing before attempting to replace any bootloader, as a mistake can leave your machine in an unbootable state. I recommend practicing in a virtual machine, using the exact same operating system you have installed on bare metal several times before attempting to do it on your system.
  • rEFInd (alternative boot menu for UEFI systems)
      • Distros usually install GRUB to different directories, you might have multiple ones
      • GRUB is both a boot manager (presents menu) and a bootloader (loads kernel)
      • rEFInd is a boot manager, but not a boot loader
      • “In theory, EFI implementations should provide boot managers”
      • all EFI-capable OSes include one, so the above limitation isn’t a problem
      • since version 3.3.0, the kernel can function as an EFI boot loader for itself
    • Installing rEFInd: apt install refind and sudo refind-install
    • rEFInd fully lives on the EFI partition, once installed on it.
    • refind.conf – a single configuration file (timeout, log level, background, icons, text,font, custom menu entries are optional, not necessary)
    • Scans your drives at every boot, lists bootable entries (bootloaders, kernels)
    • refind_linux.conf – separate config file in the /boot dir of each distro, boot options

Check This Out

  • Audio Sharing (a new Gnome Circle app)
  • The “stat /” command lets you check when your system was installed
  • How to stop video tearing in XFCE without the use of an alternative compositing manager.
    • xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/vblank_mode -s glx

Wrap-up

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

  • Norbert and Tony H for our audio production
  • Leo for timestamps and publishing
  • Josh Lowe for all his work on the website
  • Hobstar for our logo
  • initrd for the animated Discord logo
  • Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.Thanks, Clem!
]]> 5469 377 – Zero Days of Christmas https://mintcast.org/377-zero-days-of-christmas/ Thu, 06 Jan 2022 05:08:48 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5316 In security, a grub update causes problems with Ubuntu and a Log4shell update
Then in our wanderings, Joe's on vacation, Norbert's full of gingerbread, Nishant is surviving the winter, Josh is on Windows, and Bill's just glad to be here
Download
]]> 1:56 The News
21:20 Security Update
32:54 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:20:55 Announcements & Outro

In the news, Pop OS 21.10 is released, GNOME 42 – Top New Feature and Release Detail, ReactOS 0.4.14 has been released, Krita 5.0 has been released, and there’s yet another desktop environment on the horizon

In security, a grub update causes problems with Ubuntu and a Log4shell update

Then in our wanderings, Joe’s on vacation, Norbert’s full of gingerbread, Nishant is surviving the winter, Josh is on Windows, and Bill’s just glad to be here

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

  • Joe
    • Vacationing, Troubleshooting, Testing Docker, and VPNing
  • Norbert
    • XFCE WM Hybrid, zentile, OpenSUSE
  • Nishant
  • Josh
  • Bill

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!>
]]> 5316 376 – Joe, Do You Copy? https://mintcast.org/376-joe-do-you-copy/ Sun, 19 Dec 2021 18:40:05 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5299 In security, Ubuntu Kernel Security Patches, FGKASLR gets closer to mainline, Data stealing malware hides on Linux servers, Go Daddy data breach
In our Wanderings, Joe does some 3d printing, Josh got a new monitor, Norbert switches OS’s, and Clayton looks back
Download
]]> 1:46 The News
16:16 Security Update
23:52 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
52:38 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news, Linux Mint monthly news, Europe embraces open source, Debian has browser issues, Fedora goes all in on Wayland, Firefox helps you fight spam, And the Linux kernel gets rusty

In security, Ubuntu Kernel Security Patches, FGKASLR gets closer to mainline, Data stealing malware hides on Linux servers, Go Daddy data breach

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

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

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

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

Announcements

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!>
]]> 5299 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 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 365 – Upgrade Time https://mintcast.org/mintcast-365-upgrade-time/ Wed, 14 Jul 2021 05:57:18 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5137 In security Kaseya and PrintNightmare
Then in our Wanderings, Leo migrates his blog, Joe gets busy, Tony struggles with 5.11, and Mike jumpstarts a MacOS VM.
Download
]]> 2:10 The News
20:42 Security Update
32:02 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
1:10:09 Announcements & Outro

First up in the news, we realize the Kernel is 30, Ubuntu tweaks its themes, Mint 20.2 is here and Audacity owners are causing a stir in the community again. 

In security Kaseya and PrintNightmare

Then in our Wanderings, Leo migrates his blog, Joe gets busy, Tony struggles with 5.11, and Mike jumpstarts a MacOS VM.

Twitter. Discord. Telegram. Matrix. Reddit.

The News

Security Update

Bi-Weekly Wanderings

Announcements

Wrap-up

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, initrd for the animated Discord logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 5137 mintCast 358 – The Ethical Ethos (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-358-the-ethical-ethos-mp3/ Wed, 07 Apr 2021 05:02:24 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5004 Then, in the News, Mint sends relief, Ventoy has a birthday, JingPad gets closer, new docs Man up, and AlmaLinux soothes the soul.
In Security, your smartphone is spying on you, Facebook springs another leak, and we disclose our vulnerability.
Download
]]> Download

2:24 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
39:21 The News
1:02:28 Security Update
1:20:20 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I make a handoff, Joe repairs more stuff, Moss is in the news, Tony Hughes continues the challenge, and Mike the Builder makes a bike.

Then, in the News, Mint sends relief, Ventoy has a birthday, JingPad gets closer, new docs Man up, and AlmaLinux soothes the soul.

In Security, your smartphone is spying on you, Facebook springs another leak, and we disclose our vulnerability.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • Dropping FCWN, but it’s not going far.
    • Linux User Space Season 1 is wrapped up.
    • Revising some of my audio editing workflow
      1. The “Compress Dynamics” plugin replaces Audacity’s own AND the Amplify plugin.
      2. The Noise Gate by Audacity, but that isn’t installed by default, is absolutely fantastic
    • Went with a pop filter over a wind screen for this episode. We’ll see if there’s a big difference in sibilants.
  • Joe
    • Well I need to redo one of the two Razers and reverse the connections on one of the 1mores, the Razer I guess I went a bit harsh at first with the soldering iron and I need to get a new 3.5mm connector
    • I also disassembled a couple of mice with my new Pinecil soldering iron.  I like it.  The price is 25 dollars for a good working soldering iron that heats up very fast and is easily portable.  I am still looking for a stand for it that I like.
      1. I took apart the mice for the switches so that I can use them to fix a couple of other M570 mice so that I don’t have to buy more of them.  The M570 seems to have a bit of a short half life.
    • I ordered and received the Dell Latitude 5290, which cost a bit more than I wanted to pay for a tablet but I have to say that it works well.  I also discovered that there may be a good reason to switch to the i7 instead of the i5 version even with the minimal performance gains.  The i7 version has actual Thunderbolt ports instead of just USB 3.1 but I am very happy with the tablet as is.
      1. I first installed Endeavour and then added Gnome because I wanted to give it more of a try
      2. That did not last long and I had the same issues with Steam and my ongoing dislike for Gnome out of the box
      3. Switched to Mint and things started working, other than rotation which had the issue where it would rotate the screen but not the touch.  This was easily fixed by installing screenrotate in the exact same way as with arch.
      4. Steam just plain worked and looked pretty good with Torchlight and Borderlands 2, I would have tried Borderlands 3 but the game takes 112 Gb and that would have fit on the 256 Gb SSD but would not have much left room for anything else.  BL2 was installed using proton so I could use all of the DLC
      5. I will say that BL2 sent the thing from 75 percent battery to shutdown very fast but I am also not done putting the battery through its testing to make sure that it is good
      6. The only thing that I have not been able to get working is the cameras.  Neither of them work.  Didn’t work on Arch or Mint and from what I have found online no one else has been able to get them to work either
    • Ordered a 128 Gb SSD that was supposed to work and it didn’t fit into the WAN port, so I did my research the second time and found out I need a b+m SSD in order to make it work. And it needed to be a 2242 instead of the 2230 that was marked on the board.  But the b+m 128 that I ordered came and did not match the picture or the writing on the front which also said b+m the thing was only an m.  So IDK 
    • I did put a 64Gb micro SD into it but really want the faster m.2 drive either for game storage or for a second operating system.  Maybe I should get a much larger 2280 drive instead.
    • Tried to install Garuda Linux to an external drive to test it out on my tablet but after multiple tries with issues caused by the drives and not the OS I gave up the idea of running Garuda from external media and wiped out Mint on the device and installed Garuda bare bones
    • I have to say that, for Arch, it is extremely robust and takes most of the work out of everything
    • I also found out that the game that I was using as a test case that was not working in steam in endeavour was also not working in Garuda but the reason is because it was a 32-bit game.  So there is an issue with 32-bit libraries needing to be pointed to. 
    • I also should mention that I installed the Gnome version of Garuda but I will get into that in the innards section
    • Also yesterday i picked up a large volume of broken electronics for a decent price.  Lots of bluetooth and wired headphones that need some work.  Already got a couple of them working.  My current favorite is the Razer Nari Ultimate.  I will talk more about them later but some highlights are 2 DT770s, several Shure SE215 and SE315’s and several AT M30, M40, M50
  • Moss
    • In a surprise development, I got a message in Telegram from Ronnie Tucker, congratulating me as the new voice of Full Circle Weekly News podcast. I have only one person to thank for this. Thank you, Leo. Big shoes to fill, but I hope to fill them *weekly*.
    • I had some problems for a week or so with Linux Mint 20.1, the system was locking up or sometimes just the mouse buttons stopped working. A number of other people reported similar issues on the Linux Mint group on MeWe, but nothing made it to the Mint Forum. After a couple more updates, including a kernel update and two systemd updates, my machines are working fine… the Zia800 was locking up when things get plugged into the top USB port on the front of the machine but I think this has been resolved by magic. The Fellowes keyboard I bought on eBay proved to not work so we went to Voldemart and bought her a Logitech keyboard.
    • I plugged Suzanne’s Fellowes keyboard into my computer to test it, and proved it really was not working… but in doing so, I broke off the headphone jack on my nice old Koss headphones. I thought that was all, but when I plugged my other headset into the jack to do Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 021 on Wednesday, I found I could not hear anyone. Tony Hughes reminded me I had a USB soundcard on my Raspberry Pi 4 and I used it, and continue to do so. Should get a second identical card in the mail in the next couple days.
    • Tony Hughes, Dale Miracle and I recorded Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 021 last Wednesday and it is out now, following our record-breaking Episode 020 which exceeded 800 downloads. We had a great time as usual, and covered Mageia, Debian Unstable, Endeavour, and others. I’m already working on Episode 022. Episode 020 is at 818 downloads as of this recording.
    • It’s time to get your votes in on Distro Madness, Elite Eight; voting will close this Friday before moving on to the Semifinals. Surprise! Most of my readers come from mintCast listeners, so all four versions of Mint are favored to make the Final Four… but can Solus sneak in?
  • Tony Hughes
    • Lots and lots of walking. Last Monday I did a 12.5 mile walk with my wife along the coast from South Blackpool to Fleetwood to the North of us. I’m regularly doing 5+ miles a day. It is getting quite addictive to complete the virtual walk challenge I’m on.    
    • As Moss has said we recorded Distrohoppers’ Digest last Wednesday and I managed to get it all edited and Posted by Friday so all is good with the world. 
    • During the pre show chat last night I did manage to get Audacity 3.0.0 installed on Endeavor although I have not had a chance to play with it as yet. On my main box I have tried the Snap install and it opens the previous .aup files without a hitch but as it is in a snap it can only see the drive the OS is on so I had to copy a folder from another drive to the PC to try this out. One day I will work out these permission issues with Snap and Flatpak apps.   
  • Mike
    • Proton suite – VPN works very well if you’re comfortable with light CLI usage. Minor adjustments need to be made to work properly (add startup script). Drive is pretty bare bones in its current form but works perfectly, I signed up to beta test iOS app. Mail is mail.
    • Whonix – An operating system designed to help protect your privacy and anonymity. It runs on a VM and forces all programs to connect through Tor network, all clearnet connections are blocked, DNS leaks are blocked.
    • I’ve been wanting to buy a bicycle lately but the prices are so high due to increased demand and the pandemic ($1200 – $1500) that I decided to build a bicycle instead. I found a company that sells a bike partially built for a cheap price, you must complete half of it. City cruiser bicycle. I’m somewhat worried because I’m not mechanically inclined and I’ve never built a bicycle before. [Get the bike tires from Mars next year – Moss]

THE NEWS:

  • Mint News: New Linux Mint notification system. “We designed a notification system which acts as a gentle and welcome reminder and took great care not to turn it into an annoyance.” The notification system will be a desktop popup notification which can be easily dismissed and won’t reappear for 2 days. Default settings have casual users in mind and will show a notification if an update has been available for 7 “logged-in” days or older than 15 calendar days. By default the Update Manager only considers security and kernel updates. The notification system has a grace period, where if you’ve installed ANY updates in any way (update manager, terminal, synaptic) in the last 30 days then it won’t notify you. The notification system is completely configurable for more intermediate to advanced users.
    • Clem on the release for the update changes: This is planned for Mint 20.2 but it could also be backported. We’ve a journalistic slack, we can send you an invite if you contact us by email.
    • Clem noted in the comments that Flatpak will also be controllable through the Update Manager. Clem also notes that a Flatpak update from 1.6.5 to a more current one is on the roadmap.
    • Clem said of Wayland and GTK4: There are no plans to move to GTK4 right now but like anything new this is something we have an interest in and so we’re keeping an eye on it. Regarding Wayland I have no news. We’re investigating the idea of making the latest Cinnamon work with Mutter, there are many pros and cons associated with that, it’s not directly related to Wayland but it could help getting closer.
    • Clem on more Desktop Environments: Not at the moment. We’re very happy with the Cinnamon – MATE – Xfce trio.
    • Clem on usrmerge for LMDE: Although we’re likely to move to a merged system in LMDE 5, in LMDE 4 you don’t need to merge your system. First, our build environment for LMDE is not merged. Second, Debian has been aware of this issue and actively fixed it in their repositories. The Ubuntu version of plymouth produces unreproducible builds, the Debian version does not. Debian detected this issue and already patched it.
  • Londoner reminds us that ventoy-1.0.00 was released on April 5th in 2020.
  • JingOS released v. 0.8 to the public, with a lot of new features, and further announced they were starting a crowdfunding campaign for the JingPad A1 – the world’s first consumer-level Linux tablet. JingOS is intended to be a full-Linux experience for tablet computers, but with an interface that could be mistaken easily for iPad OS. They are designing a product with a 2k+ screen, Gorilla Glass, 4:3 screen ratio, and premium components, with a pen and a keyboard both available. They have Discord, Telegram, Facebook, and other forums to get involved in. It should be pointed out that they got this announcement in under the wire on March 31, there were murmurings about it being a joke.
  • Man-Pages 5.11 released featuring 50,000 line changes and 480 commits by 40 contributors. 950 pages have been changed (more than 90%). The release features various patches and bug fixes. One of the largest man-pages updates in 20 years.
  • AlmaLinux is Official

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • Your smartphone is spying on you more than you realize. Researchers from the University of Dublin have found that smartphones transmit telemetry data “back home” on average every 4½ minutes, however Android transmits 20x more data back to Google than iOS sends to Apple. This transfer happens even when the device is idle. Currently there are very few, if any, options to prevent telemetry collection. – Mike
  • 533,000,000 Facebook users have their data leaked online – Moss
  • Vulnerability Disclosure Norms
    • What are your feelings on hackers/security researchers dropping their research to the public directly without letting developers know first.
    • Do you think the typical 90-day requirement is enough?
    • Do you think companies should have an indefinite amount of time to fix issues?

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!>
]]> 5004 mintCast 358 – The Ethical Ethos https://mintcast.org/mintcast-358-the-ethical-ethos/ Wed, 07 Apr 2021 04:48:21 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=5000 Then, in the News, Mint sends relief, Ventoy has a birthday, JingPad gets closer, new docs Man up, and AlmaLinux soothes the soul.
In Security, your smartphone is spying on you, Facebook springs another leak, and we disclose our vulnerability.
Download
]]> Download

2:24 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
39:21 The News
1:02:28 Security Update
1:20:20 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I make a handoff, Joe repairs more stuff, Moss is in the news, Tony Hughes continues the challenge, and Mike the Builder makes a bike.

Then, in the News, Mint sends relief, Ventoy has a birthday, JingPad gets closer, new docs Man up, and AlmaLinux soothes the soul.

In Security, your smartphone is spying on you, Facebook springs another leak, and we disclose our vulnerability.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • Dropping FCWN, but it’s not going far.
    • Linux User Space Season 1 is wrapped up.
    • Revising some of my audio editing workflow
      1. The “Compress Dynamics” plugin replaces Audacity’s own AND the Amplify plugin.
      2. The Noise Gate by Audacity, but that isn’t installed by default, is absolutely fantastic
    • Went with a pop filter over a wind screen for this episode. We’ll see if there’s a big difference in sibilants.
  • Joe
    • Well I need to redo one of the two Razers and reverse the connections on one of the 1mores, the Razer I guess I went a bit harsh at first with the soldering iron and I need to get a new 3.5mm connector
    • I also disassembled a couple of mice with my new Pinecil soldering iron.  I like it.  The price is 25 dollars for a good working soldering iron that heats up very fast and is easily portable.  I am still looking for a stand for it that I like.
      1. I took apart the mice for the switches so that I can use them to fix a couple of other M570 mice so that I don’t have to buy more of them.  The M570 seems to have a bit of a short half life.
    • I ordered and received the Dell Latitude 5290, which cost a bit more than I wanted to pay for a tablet but I have to say that it works well.  I also discovered that there may be a good reason to switch to the i7 instead of the i5 version even with the minimal performance gains.  The i7 version has actual Thunderbolt ports instead of just USB 3.1 but I am very happy with the tablet as is.
      1. I first installed Endeavour and then added Gnome because I wanted to give it more of a try
      2. That did not last long and I had the same issues with Steam and my ongoing dislike for Gnome out of the box
      3. Switched to Mint and things started working, other than rotation which had the issue where it would rotate the screen but not the touch.  This was easily fixed by installing screenrotate in the exact same way as with arch.
      4. Steam just plain worked and looked pretty good with Torchlight and Borderlands 2, I would have tried Borderlands 3 but the game takes 112 Gb and that would have fit on the 256 Gb SSD but would not have much left room for anything else.  BL2 was installed using proton so I could use all of the DLC
      5. I will say that BL2 sent the thing from 75 percent battery to shutdown very fast but I am also not done putting the battery through its testing to make sure that it is good
      6. The only thing that I have not been able to get working is the cameras.  Neither of them work.  Didn’t work on Arch or Mint and from what I have found online no one else has been able to get them to work either
    • Ordered a 128 Gb SSD that was supposed to work and it didn’t fit into the WAN port, so I did my research the second time and found out I need a b+m SSD in order to make it work. And it needed to be a 2242 instead of the 2230 that was marked on the board.  But the b+m 128 that I ordered came and did not match the picture or the writing on the front which also said b+m the thing was only an m.  So IDK 
    • I did put a 64Gb micro SD into it but really want the faster m.2 drive either for game storage or for a second operating system.  Maybe I should get a much larger 2280 drive instead.
    • Tried to install Garuda Linux to an external drive to test it out on my tablet but after multiple tries with issues caused by the drives and not the OS I gave up the idea of running Garuda from external media and wiped out Mint on the device and installed Garuda bare bones
    • I have to say that, for Arch, it is extremely robust and takes most of the work out of everything
    • I also found out that the game that I was using as a test case that was not working in steam in endeavour was also not working in Garuda but the reason is because it was a 32-bit game.  So there is an issue with 32-bit libraries needing to be pointed to. 
    • I also should mention that I installed the Gnome version of Garuda but I will get into that in the innards section
    • Also yesterday i picked up a large volume of broken electronics for a decent price.  Lots of bluetooth and wired headphones that need some work.  Already got a couple of them working.  My current favorite is the Razer Nari Ultimate.  I will talk more about them later but some highlights are 2 DT770s, several Shure SE215 and SE315’s and several AT M30, M40, M50
  • Moss
    • In a surprise development, I got a message in Telegram from Ronnie Tucker, congratulating me as the new voice of Full Circle Weekly News podcast. I have only one person to thank for this. Thank you, Leo. Big shoes to fill, but I hope to fill them *weekly*.
    • I had some problems for a week or so with Linux Mint 20.1, the system was locking up or sometimes just the mouse buttons stopped working. A number of other people reported similar issues on the Linux Mint group on MeWe, but nothing made it to the Mint Forum. After a couple more updates, including a kernel update and two systemd updates, my machines are working fine… the Zia800 was locking up when things get plugged into the top USB port on the front of the machine but I think this has been resolved by magic. The Fellowes keyboard I bought on eBay proved to not work so we went to Voldemart and bought her a Logitech keyboard.
    • I plugged Suzanne’s Fellowes keyboard into my computer to test it, and proved it really was not working… but in doing so, I broke off the headphone jack on my nice old Koss headphones. I thought that was all, but when I plugged my other headset into the jack to do Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 021 on Wednesday, I found I could not hear anyone. Tony Hughes reminded me I had a USB soundcard on my Raspberry Pi 4 and I used it, and continue to do so. Should get a second identical card in the mail in the next couple days.
    • Tony Hughes, Dale Miracle and I recorded Distrohoppers’ Digest Episode 021 last Wednesday and it is out now, following our record-breaking Episode 020 which exceeded 800 downloads. We had a great time as usual, and covered Mageia, Debian Unstable, Endeavour, and others. I’m already working on Episode 022. Episode 020 is at 818 downloads as of this recording.
    • It’s time to get your votes in on Distro Madness, Elite Eight; voting will close this Friday before moving on to the Semifinals. Surprise! Most of my readers come from mintCast listeners, so all four versions of Mint are favored to make the Final Four… but can Solus sneak in?
  • Tony Hughes
    • Lots and lots of walking. Last Monday I did a 12.5 mile walk with my wife along the coast from South Blackpool to Fleetwood to the North of us. I’m regularly doing 5+ miles a day. It is getting quite addictive to complete the virtual walk challenge I’m on.    
    • As Moss has said we recorded Distrohoppers’ Digest last Wednesday and I managed to get it all edited and Posted by Friday so all is good with the world. 
    • During the pre show chat last night I did manage to get Audacity 3.0.0 installed on Endeavor although I have not had a chance to play with it as yet. On my main box I have tried the Snap install and it opens the previous .aup files without a hitch but as it is in a snap it can only see the drive the OS is on so I had to copy a folder from another drive to the PC to try this out. One day I will work out these permission issues with Snap and Flatpak apps.   
  • Mike
    • Proton suite – VPN works very well if you’re comfortable with light CLI usage. Minor adjustments need to be made to work properly (add startup script). Drive is pretty bare bones in its current form but works perfectly, I signed up to beta test iOS app. Mail is mail.
    • Whonix – An operating system designed to help protect your privacy and anonymity. It runs on a VM and forces all programs to connect through Tor network, all clearnet connections are blocked, DNS leaks are blocked.
    • I’ve been wanting to buy a bicycle lately but the prices are so high due to increased demand and the pandemic ($1200 – $1500) that I decided to build a bicycle instead. I found a company that sells a bike partially built for a cheap price, you must complete half of it. City cruiser bicycle. I’m somewhat worried because I’m not mechanically inclined and I’ve never built a bicycle before. [Get the bike tires from Mars next year – Moss]

THE NEWS:

  • Mint News: New Linux Mint notification system. “We designed a notification system which acts as a gentle and welcome reminder and took great care not to turn it into an annoyance.” The notification system will be a desktop popup notification which can be easily dismissed and won’t reappear for 2 days. Default settings have casual users in mind and will show a notification if an update has been available for 7 “logged-in” days or older than 15 calendar days. By default the Update Manager only considers security and kernel updates. The notification system has a grace period, where if you’ve installed ANY updates in any way (update manager, terminal, synaptic) in the last 30 days then it won’t notify you. The notification system is completely configurable for more intermediate to advanced users.
    • Clem on the release for the update changes: This is planned for Mint 20.2 but it could also be backported. We’ve a journalistic slack, we can send you an invite if you contact us by email.
    • Clem noted in the comments that Flatpak will also be controllable through the Update Manager. Clem also notes that a Flatpak update from 1.6.5 to a more current one is on the roadmap.
    • Clem said of Wayland and GTK4: There are no plans to move to GTK4 right now but like anything new this is something we have an interest in and so we’re keeping an eye on it. Regarding Wayland I have no news. We’re investigating the idea of making the latest Cinnamon work with Mutter, there are many pros and cons associated with that, it’s not directly related to Wayland but it could help getting closer.
    • Clem on more Desktop Environments: Not at the moment. We’re very happy with the Cinnamon – MATE – Xfce trio.
    • Clem on usrmerge for LMDE: Although we’re likely to move to a merged system in LMDE 5, in LMDE 4 you don’t need to merge your system. First, our build environment for LMDE is not merged. Second, Debian has been aware of this issue and actively fixed it in their repositories. The Ubuntu version of plymouth produces unreproducible builds, the Debian version does not. Debian detected this issue and already patched it.
  • Londoner reminds us that ventoy-1.0.00 was released on April 5th in 2020.
  • JingOS released v. 0.8 to the public, with a lot of new features, and further announced they were starting a crowdfunding campaign for the JingPad A1 – the world’s first consumer-level Linux tablet. JingOS is intended to be a full-Linux experience for tablet computers, but with an interface that could be mistaken easily for iPad OS. They are designing a product with a 2k+ screen, Gorilla Glass, 4:3 screen ratio, and premium components, with a pen and a keyboard both available. They have Discord, Telegram, Facebook, and other forums to get involved in. It should be pointed out that they got this announcement in under the wire on March 31, there were murmurings about it being a joke.
  • Man-Pages 5.11 released featuring 50,000 line changes and 480 commits by 40 contributors. 950 pages have been changed (more than 90%). The release features various patches and bug fixes. One of the largest man-pages updates in 20 years.
  • AlmaLinux is Official

SECURITY UPDATE: 

  • Your smartphone is spying on you more than you realize. Researchers from the University of Dublin have found that smartphones transmit telemetry data “back home” on average every 4½ minutes, however Android transmits 20x more data back to Google than iOS sends to Apple. This transfer happens even when the device is idle. Currently there are very few, if any, options to prevent telemetry collection. – Mike
  • 533,000,000 Facebook users have their data leaked online – Moss
  • Vulnerability Disclosure Norms
    • What are your feelings on hackers/security researchers dropping their research to the public directly without letting developers know first.
    • Do you think the typical 90-day requirement is enough?
    • Do you think companies should have an indefinite amount of time to fix issues?

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!>
]]> 5000 mintCast 357 – Surfboard Building Lunch (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-357-surfboard-building-lunch-mp3/ Wed, 24 Mar 2021 04:50:28 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=4983 Then, in the News, new LibreOffice and Audacity, 7zip is native, Calamares can use more butter, and a new kernel is coming
In Security, how easy it is to buy up your information
Download
]]> Download

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

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

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

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

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

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

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on April 4th, 2021.

Get the show time converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4983 mintCast 357 – Surfboard Building Lunch https://mintcast.org/mintcast-357-surfboard-building-lunch/ Wed, 24 Mar 2021 04:39:13 +0000 https://mintcast.org/?p=4979 Then, in the News, new LibreOffice and Audacity, 7zip is native, Calamares can use more butter, and a new kernel is coming
In Security, how easy it is to buy up your information
Download
]]> Download

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

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

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

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

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

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

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

ANNOUNCEMENTS: 

Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time on April 4th, 2021.

Get the show time converted to your time zone!

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, and Londoner for our time sync
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • HPR for our backup Mumble room
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4979 mintCast 354 – sudo make me an update (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-354-sudo-make-me-an-update-mp3/ Wed, 10 Feb 2021 05:57:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4913 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

1:54 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
58:30 News
1:19:27 Security Update
1:30:05 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I find a new box, Joe’s light as a feather, Moss explodes a DDE, and Bo hosts his own email

Then, in the News, a Linux Mint update, Ubuntu loses the lead, Wayland changes, and some new releases

In Security, time to patch… again.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • Picked up a Lenovo M715q Tiny. Ryzen 2400GE, 16GB RAM, 256GB NVMe
      • This will be my “studio” machine.
      • Haven’t gamed on it yet, but it’s supposed to be “not horrible”
      • It’ll free up my laptop to be a laptop again
  • Joe
    • So I got some more headphones done.  Replaced the MMCX cable on 2 of the LG HBS 770’s that I constantly use because the cable had gotten hard and cracked.  I am really impressed with how long they lasted, before I was repairing them every couple of months and I think these lasted about 8 months or so before I had to fix them.  I also really like the cables that I got to fix it.  They are a little thicker so they actually tin which makes the whole process a lot easier.  Also did another set of the Ankers with the cables I built myself and they came out well again.  Only one more to go for those. However the cost for making the cables is a bit more and may not be as economically conservative.
      • Since writing that one of the two Ankers has stopped charging.
      • The other is still working well
    • I got my weight down below 230 lbs again which is awesome.  I am not losing weight as quickly as I was when I first changed my diet again but I am not going as hard as I was before either.
    • Made my own protein bars and they are delicious.  I made one mistake though and did not spray the wax paper with a non stick so they are rather difficult to eat.  The ingredients are not cheap so I don’t know if I will be making them again.  But they are tasty.
    • Very interested in the Raspberry Pi Pico as a USB host controller but I want to give the development around it time to grow some but with the $1.99 price tag at MicroCenter I may pick up a few and put them into a drawer until more data is there.
    • Looking to upgrade my MSI GE72 gaming laptop, since the 950m is getting a bit old, but prices are once again going crazy in the used and new market because of the high cost of graphics cards right now and the fact that everyone is still working from home.  If I can wait until the vaccine is more widely distributed and people start going back to the office I imagine there will be a large volume of people off loading computers that will drive the prices back down.
    • I  have a couple of old phones that I am looking to do some projects with since they are just sitting around  but I am not sure what I should do.  Project ideas accepted jb@mintcast.org or tell me about what you have done with old phones to get some more use out of them
    • I also put the question out to the Telegram group and got a very interesting answer from listener Hob.  An application called Deskreen which can be used from an appimage and can turn any device with a web browser into another screen with some small caveats
      • If you want it to be an independent screen then you need a dummy display adapter hooked up to your system or you can display one of the screens that is already there
      • Control does not go through the device it goes through the computer which does make sense from an extra screen perspective but does mean it is not the best for remote controlling a computer.
      • The adapters are not expensive though, so that is good, and then you just set up like a normal screen and connect through the application.  This is awesome if you have a couple of older-yet-still-decent tablets sitting around.  A lot of older iPads have really good screens but a lot of difficulty adding new applications and would be perfect for something like this
  • Moss
    • I got the FuzZ400 back online with an old AMD Radeon HD 6770 video card on loan from Dale Miracle! Hope my mic sounds good. I still need to get the mic boom installed which will only take a drill bit of the correct size to accomplish. The bootup report that the rear fan was not working was solved when I found a piece of styrofoam wedged in the fan blades.
    • I’ve been having minor issues with the SSD in the FuzZ400 because it thinks it’s still in the Gigabyte Mini. I may have to reinstall Mint altogether to get everything really back together, but my current workarounds are good. Sabayon owned GRUB and I could not update it or add Grub Customizer to Sabayon (because Sabayon repos are permanently offline), and Mint did not want to take GRUB back for some reason, so I installed UbuntuDDE on sda5. No more Gentoo. Sad. The other distros were not affected.
    • I installed a new version of ExLight on the Kudu to replace Lubuntu. I’m having strange wifi issues, but this is the farthest I have gotten with a distro written by Arne Exton. 
    • My Manjaro Cinnamon installation finally glitched out (after maybe 8 months) so I replaced that with UbuntuDDE. There were three issues, and two of them were fixed through a chat in Telegram with the dev, and I filed a bug on the 3rd issue with the thanks of the dev. I now have UbuntuDDE Respin on all three of my machines (not counting the Raspberry Pis), and my wife wants it on her T430. Could this be my new Daily Driver?
    • Listener Dylan Burger submitted another excellent article to It’s MOSS, and I responded by making him an Admin on the site. So now we are two. Anyone else?
    • Not gonna talk about my teeth.
    • I’m told that my mother’s lawyers have finally sent documents out following her demise. I have not yet received them, but one cousin has.
    • We may finish White Night, volume 9 of Dresden Files, tonight.

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

    • Sudo Vulnerability
      • The exploit is in the hands of… well… everyone now. Metasploit has the module.
      • A heap buffer overflow occurs when you stuff a software full of data that causes some kind of breakage. In this case, that breakage leads to root access.
    •  Chrome[ium] Zero Day
      • Monocultuuuuuuurrrrrreeeeee!!!!!
      • Google is being very close to the chest with the details, but we know it’s another heap buffer overflow.
      • The Mitre database does not have information on the CVE. Unlisted other places like NIST.
      • Maybe linked to their nation-state writeup.
      • Electron apps…
  • Update your Stuff

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!>
]]> 4913 mintCast 354 – sudo make me an update https://mintcast.org/mintcast-354-sudo-make-me-an-update/ Wed, 10 Feb 2021 05:46:23 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4909 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

1:54 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
58:30 News
1:19:27 Security Update
1:30:05 Announcements & Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I find a new box, Joe’s light as a feather, Moss explodes a DDE, and Bo hosts his own email

Then, in the News, a Linux Mint update, Ubuntu loses the lead, Wayland changes, and some new releases

In Security, time to patch… again.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Leo
    • Picked up a Lenovo M715q Tiny. Ryzen 2400GE, 16GB RAM, 256GB NVMe
      • This will be my “studio” machine.
      • Haven’t gamed on it yet, but it’s supposed to be “not horrible”
      • It’ll free up my laptop to be a laptop again
  • Joe
    • So I got some more headphones done.  Replaced the MMCX cable on 2 of the LG HBS 770’s that I constantly use because the cable had gotten hard and cracked.  I am really impressed with how long they lasted, before I was repairing them every couple of months and I think these lasted about 8 months or so before I had to fix them.  I also really like the cables that I got to fix it.  They are a little thicker so they actually tin which makes the whole process a lot easier.  Also did another set of the Ankers with the cables I built myself and they came out well again.  Only one more to go for those. However the cost for making the cables is a bit more and may not be as economically conservative.
      • Since writing that one of the two Ankers has stopped charging.
      • The other is still working well
    • I got my weight down below 230 lbs again which is awesome.  I am not losing weight as quickly as I was when I first changed my diet again but I am not going as hard as I was before either.
    • Made my own protein bars and they are delicious.  I made one mistake though and did not spray the wax paper with a non stick so they are rather difficult to eat.  The ingredients are not cheap so I don’t know if I will be making them again.  But they are tasty.
    • Very interested in the Raspberry Pi Pico as a USB host controller but I want to give the development around it time to grow some but with the $1.99 price tag at MicroCenter I may pick up a few and put them into a drawer until more data is there.
    • Looking to upgrade my MSI GE72 gaming laptop, since the 950m is getting a bit old, but prices are once again going crazy in the used and new market because of the high cost of graphics cards right now and the fact that everyone is still working from home.  If I can wait until the vaccine is more widely distributed and people start going back to the office I imagine there will be a large volume of people off loading computers that will drive the prices back down.
    • I  have a couple of old phones that I am looking to do some projects with since they are just sitting around  but I am not sure what I should do.  Project ideas accepted jb@mintcast.org or tell me about what you have done with old phones to get some more use out of them
    • I also put the question out to the Telegram group and got a very interesting answer from listener Hob.  An application called Deskreen which can be used from an appimage and can turn any device with a web browser into another screen with some small caveats
      • If you want it to be an independent screen then you need a dummy display adapter hooked up to your system or you can display one of the screens that is already there
      • Control does not go through the device it goes through the computer which does make sense from an extra screen perspective but does mean it is not the best for remote controlling a computer.
      • The adapters are not expensive though, so that is good, and then you just set up like a normal screen and connect through the application.  This is awesome if you have a couple of older-yet-still-decent tablets sitting around.  A lot of older iPads have really good screens but a lot of difficulty adding new applications and would be perfect for something like this
  • Moss
    • I got the FuzZ400 back online with an old AMD Radeon HD 6770 video card on loan from Dale Miracle! Hope my mic sounds good. I still need to get the mic boom installed which will only take a drill bit of the correct size to accomplish. The bootup report that the rear fan was not working was solved when I found a piece of styrofoam wedged in the fan blades.
    • I’ve been having minor issues with the SSD in the FuzZ400 because it thinks it’s still in the Gigabyte Mini. I may have to reinstall Mint altogether to get everything really back together, but my current workarounds are good. Sabayon owned GRUB and I could not update it or add Grub Customizer to Sabayon (because Sabayon repos are permanently offline), and Mint did not want to take GRUB back for some reason, so I installed UbuntuDDE on sda5. No more Gentoo. Sad. The other distros were not affected.
    • I installed a new version of ExLight on the Kudu to replace Lubuntu. I’m having strange wifi issues, but this is the farthest I have gotten with a distro written by Arne Exton. 
    • My Manjaro Cinnamon installation finally glitched out (after maybe 8 months) so I replaced that with UbuntuDDE. There were three issues, and two of them were fixed through a chat in Telegram with the dev, and I filed a bug on the 3rd issue with the thanks of the dev. I now have UbuntuDDE Respin on all three of my machines (not counting the Raspberry Pis), and my wife wants it on her T430. Could this be my new Daily Driver?
    • Listener Dylan Burger submitted another excellent article to It’s MOSS, and I responded by making him an Admin on the site. So now we are two. Anyone else?
    • Not gonna talk about my teeth.
    • I’m told that my mother’s lawyers have finally sent documents out following her demise. I have not yet received them, but one cousin has.
    • We may finish White Night, volume 9 of Dresden Files, tonight.

THE NEWS:

SECURITY UPDATE: 

    • Sudo Vulnerability
      • The exploit is in the hands of… well… everyone now. Metasploit has the module.
      • A heap buffer overflow occurs when you stuff a software full of data that causes some kind of breakage. In this case, that breakage leads to root access.
    •  Chrome[ium] Zero Day
      • Monocultuuuuuuurrrrrreeeeee!!!!!
      • Google is being very close to the chest with the details, but we know it’s another heap buffer overflow.
      • The Mitre database does not have information on the CVE. Unlisted other places like NIST.
      • Maybe linked to their nation-state writeup.
      • Electron apps…
  • Update your Stuff

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!>
]]> 4909 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 – Repredictability (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-352-repredictability-mp3/ Wed, 13 Jan 2021 05:03:17 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4866 Then in the news, Linux Mint 20.1 is here, the M1 gets closer, Firefox gets a facelift and Project Lenix makes more progress 
In security, what’s going on with Qt6?
Download
]]> Download

1:41 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
33:10 News
1:02:08 Security Update
1:08:04 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been playing with Docker, Joe got a 1up, Tony bundles up again, and Josh re-predicts

Then in the news, Linux Mint 20.1 is here, the M1 gets closer, Firefox gets a facelift and Project Lenix makes more progress 

In security, what’s going on with Qt6?

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • My focus has been at work and editing Linux User Space these past couple of weeks.
    • I am finally going to put Aaron’s Docker compose file to good use to get a long term Gitea instance now that my NAS is settled and running well.
  • Joe
    • Got the screen adapter for the Arcade1Up machine.  Still need to finish putting it together
    • 3d printed a part for listener Dustin for a pair of headphones that I had sent him.
      • Had to switch to pla for the print
      • Happy to say that it printed perfectly and seemed very sturdy using the gcode that I had used before for the same print
      • Sad to say that this means that I need to go back to tweaking the settings for PETG.  Slow it down even more and see if that gets the prints to turn out right
    • Was able to fix the Samsung Galaxy Gear S3 Frontier watch with a 15 dollar part from ebay
      • I had purchased a broken motherboard for the watch that was only supposed to have issues with the heart rate sensor and the pedometer so that I could verify that the screen was working correctly
      • The screen does work and most of the functions on the watch itself works as well
      • Thought that I got lucky and the pedometer and the heart rate monitor were correct.  I verified that the heart rate monitor was working by comparing it to my other watch and everything seemed to be fine.  I did see that the number of steps were being counted but when I compared it to my phone over the course of the day the number on the watch was lower than the phone.  This should not be the case it should be the other way around.  
      • Then i found out that the watch was showing that i was going up and down stairs all day so i ordered another one and will be getting it soon in order to do another fix
      • I am giving my other watch to my wife to see if she likes it or not.  If not, I will probably sell it.
    • Got a family portrait coming in a few months. The pictures were taken for it
      • We won a raffle for it but there was still a lot of cost involved because we wanted the larger size because it comes with a couple of extra 10 inch paintings that we can send to the rest of the family
      • Way more money than i wanted to pay but with my eldest child turning 18 I really want to get it done whilst the kids have no choice in the matter
      • But it is a rather large expense for me and I don’t want to go through that same company in order to get the frame
      • I could really use some suggestions and knowledge on framing.  If you have any knowledge on the subject please advise me on the best way to frame a museum quality painting, please email me jb@mintcast.org
  • Tony Hughes
    • Not a lot going on here as we went into another stay at home order right after New Year, so I have been baking, modeling and watching other people modeling on YouTube.
    • On a good note regarding the Virus, my wife has now had the FULL vaccination as she works in the critical care department of our local hospital in an admin role. She was lucky to get her second dose just before they changed it to be 12 weeks after the first, the day after she had her second injection. This will reduce my risk considerably given where she works.
    • On the Diecast modeling as it is winter and my paintshop is in the garage which is not heated. So I have mainly been preparing models for the paint stage so dismantling them, drilling and taping the posts ready for reassembly and paint stripping then storing for later paint and reassembly. I will also print the decals needed for those models that require them at the reassembly stage.   
    • Very quiet Linux wise although last night I installed the Mint 20.1 upgrade onto my main Laptop which we will be talking about later. 
  • Josh Hawk
    •  First to clarify my predictions.
      • 1. Linux phones will double in number and power in 2021.
        • What I mean by number is the amount of phones on the market.
        • What I mean by power is a benchmark score would be doubled.
        • Only to include phones that use an official Linux kernel.
      • 2. All mainstream cable tv channels will switch to apps.
        • I know they all have apps now but what I meant was they will all have an app that requires a monthly subscription to access. Such as Discovery+ and the likes.
        • I do not mean that cable tv will die and only have apps with subscriptions but will have cable tv broadcasts and the option to use their streaming service with a small monthly fee.
      • 3. Firefox will be given to the community.
        • I don’t think that would be a totally bad thing depending on who picked up the code base.
    •      I put a poll on the mintcast group asking what distro I should use for a year long run on my main laptop. The consensus was Arch Linux and I have been working since then to get it installed and functional on that laptop.  I have the base system installed at this point and it boots but no desktop yet because I cannot get wifi connection even though I had it on the live usb. I am working with cryptodan and londoner on the issue. Finally I got WIFi working and I got to install my desktop (Cinnamon of course). I actually had to use nmcli to finally connect to wifi instead of iwd that I was using but was not working. Once I got WiFi working it was a few simple installs and I had a desktop but I did run into one more issue. After installing the desktop and lightdm I was greeted with “Failed to load light display manager” and found out I needed what was called the  lightdm-gtk-greeter and then it would load the login screen.
    • I have been working on my HP server at my parents house. I had to replace 3 drives that must have been damaged in shipping and learn how to set up hardware RAID. I finally got openSUSE Leap 15.2 installed but the wifi card I was using to install would not work once openSUSE Leap 15.2 was installed. I have since ordered some ethernet over powerline adapters to see if that solves my internet woes. The powerline ethernet was the plan all along but I was just wanting to get the system set up at least and I had the wifi usb dongle already so I figured i’d use that till it didn’t work. 

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, 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!>
]]> 4866 mintCast 352 – Repredictability https://mintcast.org/mintcast-352-repredictability/ Wed, 13 Jan 2021 05:03:12 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4862 Then in the news, Linux Mint 20.1 is here, the M1 gets closer, Firefox gets a facelift and Project Lenix makes more progress 
In security, what’s going on with Qt6?
Download
]]> Download

1:41 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
33:10 News
1:02:08 Security Update
1:08:04 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been playing with Docker, Joe got a 1up, Tony bundles up again, and Josh re-predicts

Then in the news, Linux Mint 20.1 is here, the M1 gets closer, Firefox gets a facelift and Project Lenix makes more progress 

In security, what’s going on with Qt6?

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • My focus has been at work and editing Linux User Space these past couple of weeks.
    • I am finally going to put Aaron’s Docker compose file to good use to get a long term Gitea instance now that my NAS is settled and running well.
  • Joe
    • Got the screen adapter for the Arcade1Up machine.  Still need to finish putting it together
    • 3d printed a part for listener Dustin for a pair of headphones that I had sent him.
      • Had to switch to pla for the print
      • Happy to say that it printed perfectly and seemed very sturdy using the gcode that I had used before for the same print
      • Sad to say that this means that I need to go back to tweaking the settings for PETG.  Slow it down even more and see if that gets the prints to turn out right
    • Was able to fix the Samsung Galaxy Gear S3 Frontier watch with a 15 dollar part from ebay
      • I had purchased a broken motherboard for the watch that was only supposed to have issues with the heart rate sensor and the pedometer so that I could verify that the screen was working correctly
      • The screen does work and most of the functions on the watch itself works as well
      • Thought that I got lucky and the pedometer and the heart rate monitor were correct.  I verified that the heart rate monitor was working by comparing it to my other watch and everything seemed to be fine.  I did see that the number of steps were being counted but when I compared it to my phone over the course of the day the number on the watch was lower than the phone.  This should not be the case it should be the other way around.  
      • Then i found out that the watch was showing that i was going up and down stairs all day so i ordered another one and will be getting it soon in order to do another fix
      • I am giving my other watch to my wife to see if she likes it or not.  If not, I will probably sell it.
    • Got a family portrait coming in a few months. The pictures were taken for it
      • We won a raffle for it but there was still a lot of cost involved because we wanted the larger size because it comes with a couple of extra 10 inch paintings that we can send to the rest of the family
      • Way more money than i wanted to pay but with my eldest child turning 18 I really want to get it done whilst the kids have no choice in the matter
      • But it is a rather large expense for me and I don’t want to go through that same company in order to get the frame
      • I could really use some suggestions and knowledge on framing.  If you have any knowledge on the subject please advise me on the best way to frame a museum quality painting, please email me jb@mintcast.org
  • Tony Hughes
    • Not a lot going on here as we went into another stay at home order right after New Year, so I have been baking, modeling and watching other people modeling on YouTube.
    • On a good note regarding the Virus, my wife has now had the FULL vaccination as she works in the critical care department of our local hospital in an admin role. She was lucky to get her second dose just before they changed it to be 12 weeks after the first, the day after she had her second injection. This will reduce my risk considerably given where she works.
    • On the Diecast modeling as it is winter and my paintshop is in the garage which is not heated. So I have mainly been preparing models for the paint stage so dismantling them, drilling and taping the posts ready for reassembly and paint stripping then storing for later paint and reassembly. I will also print the decals needed for those models that require them at the reassembly stage.   
    • Very quiet Linux wise although last night I installed the Mint 20.1 upgrade onto my main Laptop which we will be talking about later. 
  • Josh Hawk
    •  First to clarify my predictions.
      • 1. Linux phones will double in number and power in 2021.
        • What I mean by number is the amount of phones on the market.
        • What I mean by power is a benchmark score would be doubled.
        • Only to include phones that use an official Linux kernel.
      • 2. All mainstream cable tv channels will switch to apps.
        • I know they all have apps now but what I meant was they will all have an app that requires a monthly subscription to access. Such as Discovery+ and the likes.
        • I do not mean that cable tv will die and only have apps with subscriptions but will have cable tv broadcasts and the option to use their streaming service with a small monthly fee.
      • 3. Firefox will be given to the community.
        • I don’t think that would be a totally bad thing depending on who picked up the code base.
    •      I put a poll on the mintcast group asking what distro I should use for a year long run on my main laptop. The consensus was Arch Linux and I have been working since then to get it installed and functional on that laptop.  I have the base system installed at this point and it boots but no desktop yet because I cannot get wifi connection even though I had it on the live usb. I am working with cryptodan and londoner on the issue. Finally I got WIFi working and I got to install my desktop (Cinnamon of course). I actually had to use nmcli to finally connect to wifi instead of iwd that I was using but was not working. Once I got WiFi working it was a few simple installs and I had a desktop but I did run into one more issue. After installing the desktop and lightdm I was greeted with “Failed to load light display manager” and found out I needed what was called the  lightdm-gtk-greeter and then it would load the login screen.
    • I have been working on my HP server at my parents house. I had to replace 3 drives that must have been damaged in shipping and learn how to set up hardware RAID. I finally got openSUSE Leap 15.2 installed but the wifi card I was using to install would not work once openSUSE Leap 15.2 was installed. I have since ordered some ethernet over powerline adapters to see if that solves my internet woes. The powerline ethernet was the plan all along but I was just wanting to get the system set up at least and I had the wifi usb dongle already so I figured i’d use that till it didn’t work. 

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

Announcements:

Wrap-up:

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

  • Owen Peery for our audio editing, Josh Lowe for all his work on the website, Hobstar for our logo, 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!>
]]> 4862 mintCast 351 – Greasy Joysticks (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-351-greasy-joysticks-mp3/ Wed, 30 Dec 2020 06:02:28 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4840 Then in the news, Mint’s 20.1 Beta is available, Kentucky Fried Chicken reduces, reuses and recycles, XFCE sees an upgrade, and Gnome not far behind.
In security, Solarwinds...
Download
]]> Download

0:27 HPR Spot
1:22 Show Start
2:46 Bi-Weekly Wanderings
42:01 News
1:06:10 Security Update
1:16:09 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I nuke an SSD on accident, Joe gets buff…er, Tony fills a doggy bag, Moss is grateful, and Erik Linuxes all the things!

Then in the news, Mint’s 20.1 Beta is available, Kentucky Fried Chicken reduces, reuses and recycles, XFCE sees an upgrade, and Gnome not far behind.

In security, Solarwinds…

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • As promised, rebuilt my NAS during the holiday downtime
    • Traded the Pi 4 for the NAS for Nextcloud.
    • Nextcloud storage lives in BTRFS now!
    • Neal Gompa, of Fedora and openSUSE fame, advises a move to the HWE kernel for better btrfs support.
    • My ESXi server bit the dust… sort of.
      • I was convinced an SSD had died, but it was the OS flash drive
      • Nuked the SSD for testing and realized it was fine…
  • Joe
    • Enjoying time off with the kids. Still haven’t killed any of them yet so things must be going ok.
    • My doctor told me my cholesterol was high again so I need to come off the diet that I am on and try something else.  Going to try out calorie restriction and see if coach Greg knows what he is talking about.  High volume, low calorie dense foods, while maintaining a low caloric intake.  He has a new cookbook but I am not paying those prices for it.
    • At this point the PSP’s have paid for themselves including all the replacement parts.  Thanks listener Dustin I hope it is treating you well.
    • I was able to pick up a broken Samsung Gear S3 at a decent price and tried to get it to work.  I was able to get the battery to charge but I was not able to get it to turn on.  I was able to find a temporary replacement motherboard for it on eBay for 15 dollars without the pedometer or the heart rate monitor which will allow me to test the functionality of the screen and make sure that the problem is the motherboard and not the screen.  Either way I used the profit from the PSP’s to get and I have had fun trying out different things to get it working.  I will be keeping my eyes open on ebay for others that look promising.  I have plenty of replacement parts at this point if I can find one that has just a dead battery or a broken back screen.  But I want to get the test board first so that I can make sure I know what the issues are. I should mention that the item was water damaged and I went through the normal process to try and fix that (IPA and a toothbrush).
    • Lots of exercise while on vacation.  Have done a lot of bike riding and weight lifting.
    • Someone got me an Arcade 1Up machine.  The Space Invaders version.  Which is really cool.  It is an expensive gift to have come from someone not family.  Probably one of the cooler gifts that I have ever gotten.  Definitely going to be modding it after a whole lot of research. 
      • I have already built several USB encoders in the past so that will not be much of an issue.  I will probably use a 3B+ or the batocera ThinkPad so that I can easily hook up a keyboard for quick fixes and setup.  May drill a hole in the side for external USB ports.
      • I will order the display adapter and I have not decided how the control setup will be yet because I do want to be able to play the most amount of games on it that I can including fighting games.  Might be hard for games that require shoulder buttons but not impossible. 
      • I will also have a temporary setup that allows the use of a controller and that could also cover for any games that I cannot get the arcade setup for.
      • I am going to see if I can get some boards and some drill bits and make multiple arcade setups.  Well I would like to, it depends on the cost and the time involved.  But the atmegas for the USB encoders are not hard to make and not expensive, the various arcade buttons can be if I go for good ones.
      • But first I am going to put it together stock and play with it like that
  • Tony Hughes
    • Enjoying Christmas as much as possible with the restrictions here in the UK we had one guest for Lunch on Christmas day which I cooked. After he went home we went for a Christmas day walk and popped in on a relative of my wife who lives 10 minutes walk away. We were in time to say Hi to some of her cousins and her aunt on a Zoom call, we only stayed 5 minutes or so but it was nice to connect with family on the holiday.
    • For the last week it was mainly planning and preparing for Christmas Day baking traditional mince pies, shopping for and preparing everything for the Christmas meal. I like to prepare all the vegetables ready for cooking the day before saves work on the day and I can relax a little. I also cooked the chicken the night before to give me oven space on the day. Only 2 meat eaters so not a massive bird but plenty for leftovers and our friend to take a doggy bag home for his leftover meal.
  • Moss
    • I received some Yule money from Firecat which allowed me to get the computer desk, UPS and monitor I needed to finish setting up my studio space. I need to get a drill bit so I can mount my mic boom and then I’ll be done. 
    • I got a new sponsor on Sponsus! My second…
    • I’ve been hunting for that next great distro to review. I installed Ultimate Edition, which looked really great — like a major media company wanted to make Ubuntu look flashy — but it didn’t write GRUB anywhere it can find. I tried Mageia 8 Beta2, but couldn’t find how to use or install dnfdragora, which is listed as the second choice in package management (it would be my first choice). I tried to install Slax and SolydK, but they refused to install on a UEFI system. So I installed Lubuntu 20.10. I don’t think we’ve reviewed anything with an LX-type desktop yet. I’ve had no issues, and LXQt looks like it has come of age at last.
    • Just prior to yesterday’s team meeting, I decided to reinstall Mint 20 on my desktop and restore it from my latest Timeshift backup. Nope. I then spent several hours trying different things, and the ultimate solution was to nuke the SSD and start over. I installed Linux Mint 20 MATE on it, and was going to leave it there but I just couldn’t, so I split the SSD in half (partitioned, people, I’m not a lunatic), and split the second half ⅔-⅓. I put OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 on the larger partition and Bodhi 5.1 on the smaller. I have those two mostly set up, and as of right now I’m 100% (I think) on the Mint partition being back up to snuff.
    • I’ve had a few promises of articles for It’s Moss dot com, but nothing has yet been submitted. mintCast listeners, this is for you, please submit stuff. I’ve kept up with a couple of blog posts of my own, usually echoed to my blog at LinuxQuestions.org. 
    • Mom is still in the rehab home, and has to pay for her room now as she ran out of days covered by Medicare. But there are other family issues: My uncle and aunt moved from their home in Yakima WA to a senior center in Utah, but my aunt was seriously injured on the trip, had to spend some hospital and rehab time before moving on to Utah, but died shortly after arriving. During this, my uncle went to the hospital with Covid, but he’s back at the center and doing ok (he was back home with his wife before she passed).
    • We have been running out of shows to watch, so we went scanning for old ones we missed. I don’t know how we missed Haven, but it’s on the list now, and we also found Locke & Key (sort of the same thing as Stranger Things but based on a comic) and, to keep things light, Mr. Iglesias, a Welcome-Back-Kotter remake using comedian Gabriel Iglesias and a mostly minority cast taking place in his native Long Beach (which is also where my grandmother lived, so I know some of the places).
    • Dresden-wise, we have started Book 9, White Night.
  • Erik Lietz
    • Office on Mint 20 – since the last episode I was part of, we have completed our transition to Mint 20 on all of our production machines. Transition went well and other than our Windows VM – very stable. 
    • Microsoft Office in a Windows VM – I forgot how long it takes to install Microsoft software. 
    • Switching away from AutoCAD – looking at BricsCAD, which is a Linux native CAD program that may replace AutoCAD for 2D drawing work and most of our 3D design work. 
    • Nextcloud on Intel NUC. For the office, we bought a pre-configured Nextcloud setups on an Intel NUC. I love the NUC form factor. This system has a customized version of Arch Linux tuned to run Nextcloud. Now I just need to wrap my head around using Nextcloud. 
    • Intel NUC as automated off-site backup. Seeing the form factor of the Intel NUC (and really liking them) we got 2 of the NUC’s to set up as off-site daily backup machines. I haven’t gotten into these yet but the idea is to use a minimal installation of Ubuntu Server or Debian using Rsync as the transfer system. 
    • https://www.howtogeek.com/116032/how-to-encrypt-your-home-folder-after-installing-ubuntu/ 
    • https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-use-7zip-to-encrypt-files/ 
    • Raspberry Pis for kids workstations. My wife and I are setting up individual computer stations for the kids using Raspberry Pi 4Bs with 4 GB. I’m hoping they will be desktop replacements. Not sure yet if I will use the Raspberry OS or Ubuntu MATE. 
    • PinePhone! I got my PinePhone last week. It’s the Manjaro edition phone with their FOSH operating system. The build quality on the phone is very good, especially for the price. The Manjaro operating system is a little buggy. I haven’t gotten a phone call to go through yet. Some apps like Telegram work just fine. It does have a fully functioning terminal. After some checking online, I think I am going to get an SD card for it and then try a couple of different operating systems. From what I can tell either Sailfish OS or Ubuntu Touch are the two OS’s that are the most polished right now. (Moss: /e/ and Lineage OS are better than Ubuntu Touch, about the same level of polish as Sailfish, and Sailfish doesn’t sell to the US.)

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • The SolarWinds Hack
    • As far as we know malicious updates were released in new versions of Orion, SolarWinds’ network outage monitoring utility, back in March.
    • FireEye discovered this month because they were on the list of hacked companies, which is how they caught on initially.
    • A big downside is that FireEye makes red team tools. Essentially reconnaissance and hacking tools for penetration testers. Now that code is in the hands of malicious actors.
    • Turns out, over 18,000 of 33,000 customers were using Orion in their networks including, seemingly, every department in the US government that has IT staff, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, and hospitals, just to name a few. More infections noted in every continent but Oceania and Antarctica.
    • We don’t know much about other companies, even the named ones, since this is a damaging issue.
    • Solarwinds has been noted as using a password “solarwinds123” and asking customers to disable antivirus on machines using Orion.
    • …Screaming scientists at the beginning of a catastrophe film.
    • SUSE not affected by SolarWinds Orion vulnerability

Conspiracy Time: The CEO of Solarwinds, Kevin Thompson, signaled he would be moving to another position at the end of the year. It happened, and a successor appointed, a day before the FireEye announcement.

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!>
]]> 4840 mintCast 351 – Greasy Joysticks https://mintcast.org/mintcast-351-greasy-joysticks/ Wed, 30 Dec 2020 06:02:27 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4836 Then in the news, Mint’s 20.1 Beta is available, Kentucky Fried Chicken recycles, XFCE sees an upgrade, and Gnome not far behind.
In security, Solarwinds...
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

First up, in our Wanderings, I nuke an SSD on accident, Joe gets buff…er, Tony fills a doggy bag, Moss is grateful, and Erik Linuxes all the things!

Then in the news, Mint’s 20.1 Beta is available, Kentucky Fried Chicken reduces, reuses and recycles, XFCE sees an upgrade, and Gnome not far behind.

In security, Solarwinds…

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • As promised, rebuilt my NAS during the holiday downtime
    • Traded the Pi 4 for the NAS for Nextcloud.
    • Nextcloud storage lives in BTRFS now!
    • Neal Gompa, of Fedora and openSUSE fame, advises a move to the HWE kernel for better btrfs support.
    • My ESXi server bit the dust… sort of.
      • I was convinced an SSD had died, but it was the OS flash drive
      • Nuked the SSD for testing and realized it was fine…
  • Joe
    • Enjoying time off with the kids. Still haven’t killed any of them yet so things must be going ok.
    • My doctor told me my cholesterol was high again so I need to come off the diet that I am on and try something else.  Going to try out calorie restriction and see if coach Greg knows what he is talking about.  High volume, low calorie dense foods, while maintaining a low caloric intake.  He has a new cookbook but I am not paying those prices for it.
    • At this point the PSP’s have paid for themselves including all the replacement parts.  Thanks listener Dustin I hope it is treating you well.
    • I was able to pick up a broken Samsung Gear S3 at a decent price and tried to get it to work.  I was able to get the battery to charge but I was not able to get it to turn on.  I was able to find a temporary replacement motherboard for it on eBay for 15 dollars without the pedometer or the heart rate monitor which will allow me to test the functionality of the screen and make sure that the problem is the motherboard and not the screen.  Either way I used the profit from the PSP’s to get and I have had fun trying out different things to get it working.  I will be keeping my eyes open on ebay for others that look promising.  I have plenty of replacement parts at this point if I can find one that has just a dead battery or a broken back screen.  But I want to get the test board first so that I can make sure I know what the issues are. I should mention that the item was water damaged and I went through the normal process to try and fix that (IPA and a toothbrush).
    • Lots of exercise while on vacation.  Have done a lot of bike riding and weight lifting.
    • Someone got me an Arcade 1Up machine.  The Space Invaders version.  Which is really cool.  It is an expensive gift to have come from someone not family.  Probably one of the cooler gifts that I have ever gotten.  Definitely going to be modding it after a whole lot of research. 
      • I have already built several USB encoders in the past so that will not be much of an issue.  I will probably use a 3B+ or the batocera ThinkPad so that I can easily hook up a keyboard for quick fixes and setup.  May drill a hole in the side for external USB ports.
      • I will order the display adapter and I have not decided how the control setup will be yet because I do want to be able to play the most amount of games on it that I can including fighting games.  Might be hard for games that require shoulder buttons but not impossible. 
      • I will also have a temporary setup that allows the use of a controller and that could also cover for any games that I cannot get the arcade setup for.
      • I am going to see if I can get some boards and some drill bits and make multiple arcade setups.  Well I would like to, it depends on the cost and the time involved.  But the atmegas for the USB encoders are not hard to make and not expensive, the various arcade buttons can be if I go for good ones.
      • But first I am going to put it together stock and play with it like that
  • Tony Hughes
    • Enjoying Christmas as much as possible with the restrictions here in the UK we had one guest for Lunch on Christmas day which I cooked. After he went home we went for a Christmas day walk and popped in on a relative of my wife who lives 10 minutes walk away. We were in time to say Hi to some of her cousins and her aunt on a Zoom call, we only stayed 5 minutes or so but it was nice to connect with family on the holiday.
    • For the last week it was mainly planning and preparing for Christmas Day baking traditional mince pies, shopping for and preparing everything for the Christmas meal. I like to prepare all the vegetables ready for cooking the day before saves work on the day and I can relax a little. I also cooked the chicken the night before to give me oven space on the day. Only 2 meat eaters so not a massive bird but plenty for leftovers and our friend to take a doggy bag home for his leftover meal.
  • Moss
    • I received some Yule money from Firecat which allowed me to get the computer desk, UPS and monitor I needed to finish setting up my studio space. I need to get a drill bit so I can mount my mic boom and then I’ll be done. 
    • I got a new sponsor on Sponsus! My second…
    • I’ve been hunting for that next great distro to review. I installed Ultimate Edition, which looked really great — like a major media company wanted to make Ubuntu look flashy — but it didn’t write GRUB anywhere it can find. I tried Mageia 8 Beta2, but couldn’t find how to use or install dnfdragora, which is listed as the second choice in package management (it would be my first choice). I tried to install Slax and SolydK, but they refused to install on a UEFI system. So I installed Lubuntu 20.10. I don’t think we’ve reviewed anything with an LX-type desktop yet. I’ve had no issues, and LXQt looks like it has come of age at last.
    • Just prior to yesterday’s team meeting, I decided to reinstall Mint 20 on my desktop and restore it from my latest Timeshift backup. Nope. I then spent several hours trying different things, and the ultimate solution was to nuke the SSD and start over. I installed Linux Mint 20 MATE on it, and was going to leave it there but I just couldn’t, so I split the SSD in half (partitioned, people, I’m not a lunatic), and split the second half ⅔-⅓. I put OpenMandriva Lx 4.1 on the larger partition and Bodhi 5.1 on the smaller. I have those two mostly set up, and as of right now I’m 100% (I think) on the Mint partition being back up to snuff.
    • I’ve had a few promises of articles for It’s Moss dot com, but nothing has yet been submitted. mintCast listeners, this is for you, please submit stuff. I’ve kept up with a couple of blog posts of my own, usually echoed to my blog at LinuxQuestions.org. 
    • Mom is still in the rehab home, and has to pay for her room now as she ran out of days covered by Medicare. But there are other family issues: My uncle and aunt moved from their home in Yakima WA to a senior center in Utah, but my aunt was seriously injured on the trip, had to spend some hospital and rehab time before moving on to Utah, but died shortly after arriving. During this, my uncle went to the hospital with Covid, but he’s back at the center and doing ok (he was back home with his wife before she passed).
    • We have been running out of shows to watch, so we went scanning for old ones we missed. I don’t know how we missed Haven, but it’s on the list now, and we also found Locke & Key (sort of the same thing as Stranger Things but based on a comic) and, to keep things light, Mr. Iglesias, a Welcome-Back-Kotter remake using comedian Gabriel Iglesias and a mostly minority cast taking place in his native Long Beach (which is also where my grandmother lived, so I know some of the places).
    • Dresden-wise, we have started Book 9, White Night.
  • Erik Lietz
    • Office on Mint 20 – since the last episode I was part of, we have completed our transition to Mint 20 on all of our production machines. Transition went well and other than our Windows VM – very stable. 
    • Microsoft Office in a Windows VM – I forgot how long it takes to install Microsoft software. 
    • Switching away from AutoCAD – looking at BricsCAD, which is a Linux native CAD program that may replace AutoCAD for 2D drawing work and most of our 3D design work. 
    • Nextcloud on Intel NUC. For the office, we bought a pre-configured Nextcloud setups on an Intel NUC. I love the NUC form factor. This system has a customized version of Arch Linux tuned to run Nextcloud. Now I just need to wrap my head around using Nextcloud. 
    • Intel NUC as automated off-site backup. Seeing the form factor of the Intel NUC (and really liking them) we got 2 of the NUC’s to set up as off-site daily backup machines. I haven’t gotten into these yet but the idea is to use a minimal installation of Ubuntu Server or Debian using Rsync as the transfer system. 
    • https://www.howtogeek.com/116032/how-to-encrypt-your-home-folder-after-installing-ubuntu/ 
    • https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-use-7zip-to-encrypt-files/ 
    • Raspberry Pis for kids workstations. My wife and I are setting up individual computer stations for the kids using Raspberry Pi 4Bs with 4 GB. I’m hoping they will be desktop replacements. Not sure yet if I will use the Raspberry OS or Ubuntu MATE. 
    • PinePhone! I got my PinePhone last week. It’s the Manjaro edition phone with their FOSH operating system. The build quality on the phone is very good, especially for the price. The Manjaro operating system is a little buggy. I haven’t gotten a phone call to go through yet. Some apps like Telegram work just fine. It does have a fully functioning terminal. After some checking online, I think I am going to get an SD card for it and then try a couple of different operating systems. From what I can tell either Sailfish OS or Ubuntu Touch are the two OS’s that are the most polished right now. (Moss: /e/ and Lineage OS are better than Ubuntu Touch, about the same level of polish as Sailfish, and Sailfish doesn’t sell to the US.)

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE:

  • The SolarWinds Hack
    • As far as we know malicious updates were released in new versions of Orion, SolarWinds’ network outage monitoring utility, back in March.
    • FireEye discovered this month because they were on the list of hacked companies, which is how they caught on initially.
    • A big downside is that FireEye makes red team tools. Essentially reconnaissance and hacking tools for penetration testers. Now that code is in the hands of malicious actors.
    • Turns out, over 18,000 of 33,000 customers were using Orion in their networks including, seemingly, every department in the US government that has IT staff, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, and hospitals, just to name a few. More infections noted in every continent but Oceania and Antarctica.
    • We don’t know much about other companies, even the named ones, since this is a damaging issue.
    • Solarwinds has been noted as using a password “solarwinds123” and asking customers to disable antivirus on machines using Orion.
    • …Screaming scientists at the beginning of a catastrophe film.
    • SUSE not affected by SolarWinds Orion vulnerability

Conspiracy Time: The CEO of Solarwinds, Kevin Thompson, signaled he would be moving to another position at the end of the year. It happened, and a successor appointed, a day before the FireEye announcement.

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!>
]]> 4836 mintCast 342 – Security Theater (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-342-security-theater-mp3/ Wed, 26 Aug 2020 04:50:08 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4592 Then, in our news, Pinta, Lutris and Mozilla
In security, we talk security recommendations and the NSA
Download
]]>

Download

We would like to welcome Owen Peery to the team. He’s our new editor!

1:40 Wanderings
46:32 News
1:05:05 Security
1:22:05 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been testing out a new keyboard, Tony Hughes tries to remove a finger (again), Joe has been soldering and reading, Moss has been adding more distros,

Then, in our news, Pinta, Lutris and Mozilla

In security, we talk security recommendations and the NSA

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Digging into some errors I got, last stream on Youtube. It was complaining that I was streaming at only 3500kbps. That was odd as I’ve always streamed at OBS’s default. Turns out, Youtube wants 4500kbps now. So, I cranked the video bitrate up to 6400 in OBS’s Output section. No errors!
    • Kernel 5.8 is smooth as silk
    • Got a new keyboard. A cheap mechanical with OUTEMU Red switches. Cost $35, but also came with a mouse pad and mouse. They’re all RGB of course, except for the mouse pad.
    • Been watching Star Trek Lower Decks. It’s hilarious. It’s a story of about 5 ensigns that work on the starship Cerritos. They’re not high ranking, and only get to do grunt work for the most part, but they find their niche and get their jobs done. I’ve never been much of a Trek fan, but this is seriously something I can see myself watching until the end of the series. It has the feel of Rick and Morty and Futurama fused together. Hijinks obviously ensue.
    • Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 Trailer
  • Tony H
    • So I managed to drill my finger in an accident while doing some work on the matchbox cars, it’s not good when a drill bit brakes while you are drilling a post out and you have the model held in your hand, the cut was very sore and the end of the finger is still numb from a little bit of nerve damage as a result. What with that and cutting myself while cooking my wife thinks I have a death wish.
    • As a result of the accident I haven’t been doing much in the way of restoration for the last couple of weeks but I have made some nice eBay buys which have resulted in the collection and spares to the restoration has grown a little larger, although I had to stop bidding on stuff as I wouldn’t have been around for any deliveries that may have arrived after I came away, it has probably saved me a few shekels.
    • For a little light relief I installed Ubuntu Touch on my OnePlus 1 and while it was a fairly painless process unlike trying to update Lineage OS to 17.1 on the same phone which I can’t get it to do, it is definitely NOT ready for prime time yet. All the apps seem to be web based and do not work very well, I was thinking of Using the phone as my Sat Nav for my car but as you need the internet even if it worked well, which it doesn’t then I would need to get a new sim card and data plan as it will not work on the GPS alone as it needs a web connection for the apps to work. I also tried to connect to the WiFi here at Woodbrooke and it will not connect to the login page to finish authorising access to the WiFi.
    • I’m continuing to play with Mint 20 Mate on the DHD laptop with the intention of this being my review for the September show. Given my findings so far It might be a short review as apart from the Snapd issue and a few programs being updated it is pretty much business as usual, so while I am here at Woodbrooke I’m having a look at a distro suggested by a listener, SparkyLinux and while it is based on Debian they do what Mint used to do with the LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) and base one of the spins on the testing branch with a warning that it is not for those wanting a stable system or are new to Linux. Just to note that both iso’s will fit on a 2Gb Flash drive (or less than 1GB if you opt for one of the stable minimal GUI spins). So if you have an old one kicking around you were wondering what to use it for, then maybe SparkyLinux could be an option.    
    • I wrote the 4th in my Full Circle Magazine series on podcast production the first of which was in issue 159 at the end of July. I’m not a natural writer but I have been enjoying sharing what I have learned since starting on mintCast and DHD.
  • Moss
    • I installed Gecko ROLLING to my desktop. So now I have ROLLING on my desktop and STATIC on my laptop (equivalent to openSUSE Tumbleweed and Leap, respectively). 
    • On the 15th, I installed KDE neon, also to my desktop. Oddly, the announcement that neon was available based on 20.04 did not mention that you would still be installing the 18.04 version, and then be greeted with the Upgrade button. It took a few more button pushes to get the upgrade started, but it ran beautifully. I then ran updates and installed some of my more common additions, including Stacer 1.10. Stacer ran great, but Discover popped up and said there was an update to it. I ran the update. And now Stacer wouldn’t load, it said “program not found”. So I reinstalled from my .deb package and it worked again… and Discover said there was an update again. I have posted to the KDE neon user forum to report this issue and ask how I can get Discover to ignore the update. Apparently they think an app in the repo is newer than the same app from a .deb file, but why it disables the program to run the update is beyond me. Note to self: Check the repo to see if an application is there before installing saved .deb files.
    • I now have only one free partition each on my desktop and laptop. And I’m starting to have memory issues — not my computer, me, trying to remember what all I have installed. Updating has already gotten beyond the “fun” level.
    • I am tempted to install Releax Linux to my system even though it’s only 0.5beta. This is a fully independent distro out of India, with a new package manager and everything. It sounds really exciting. Maybe I should dig up Tony Hughes’ instructions and learn how to install it in a VM.
    • I posted a new blog to LinuxQuestions.org.
    • I did some performing on Thursday the 20th on Eurofilk, which is now happening every other Thursday. I got to play with Cecilia Eng, first time for me and she’s a legend, and a total of 9 others in the Zoom room, including my friend K.J. Noren. This is the first performing I’ve done since about 2 weeks after my accident. My shoulder hurt a lot more afterward, but I seem to have gained mobility.
    • We’re about ⅔ of the way through Blood Rites, the 6th Dresden Files book. Dresden missed a huge hint when he had a major data download from Thomas; there is no explanation for that miss. We’re enjoying the book, we just wish Dresden could be more successful stopping people from dying.
  • Joe
    • Watched a lot of YouTube and did some soldering
    • Took a break for a few days from reading but still got some in
      • Up to book 20 in Drizzt
      • Demon Accords book 16
      • Big Damn Hero
        • Firefly book, surprisingly good
    • Soldered some headphones
      • New MMCX connectors came in and got them set up on 2 sets of headphones.
      • Only need to redo one of the connections at this point
    • Was informed that I missed the 8th book of the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony.  Although I am more than a little disillusioned by his work since he uses it as a platform to push his ideology on age of consent.
      • Also the book does not exist in audio format from what I can see so if I do read it, it will have to be text aloud
    • Attempted to make the macro keyboard, followed the instructions exactly but was not able to get it working.
      • Rechecked my soldering several times but it was solid
      • Only about 6 of the 12 keys would work.  
      • So I took it apart down to the board on the keypad and did continuity tests on the whole thing
      • Bad board and a slightly different pinout than was in the instructions but the different pinout shouldn’t be a concern
      • I could try to solder directly to the board and to the pins but that seems a little crazy even for me.  Although if I get bored enough you never know.
      • I have ordered a couple of different types of keyboards to give another try using different methods
      • Right before the show a test set of 4 mechanical keys showed up and I was able to get them wired in place although I still need to wire the Promicro and I need to 3D-print the case for it
      • Thinking about ordering a set of 90 MX Cherry Blues and 3d printing everything else
  • Tony W
    • Refinishing my basement practice/rehearsal/studio/home office space
      • Installed carpet to cover concrete floor
      • Covered the one concrete wall in this room with drywall/heavy cloth, for now
      • Have insulation and drywall ready to go for remaining walls/ceilings
      • Will most likely get a permit from county before installing drywall over electrical, ductwork etc
      • This involved disassembling all of my tech, my podcast setup, etc and almost did not set back up before today’s podcast
    • Updated to Mint 20
      • Upgrade was fairly seamless, but had a couple minor issues
        • The update did break my Grub.  Reinstalled Grub very easily using MX Linux live USB Boot Repair (courtesy of Ventoy)
        • The version of Mumble installed from Software Manager didn’t work, had to install the Flatpak
      • Installed Linux via Crouton on Acer Chromebook 314
          • Crostini was great, but somewhat useless to me as there is no direct access to hardware (particularly USB audio devices) 
        • Crouton gives you full Linux desktop courtesy of chroot
        • Process to install:
          • Have to turn on Developer mode (which erases local data)
          • Follow instructions to install via crosh (Chrome terminal)
          • Once installed, to enter Linux desktop: Sudo enter-chroot startxfce4 (or sudo startxfce4 as a shortcut)
        • From there, Ctrl/Alt/Shift Forward and Ctrl/Alt/Shift/Back to switch between ChromeOS and XFCE (or desktop of your choice)
        • Default is XFCE but Cinnamon, KDE, e17, LXDE and Unity are also available 
        • IT WORKED!!!  My audio interface works perfectly with XFCE running on the Chromebook. 
          • Audacity, Mumble, OBS studio ready to go
        • Downsides: 
          • Developer Mode
          • Not supported – ChromeOS updates can break it
          • Default install is 16.04.  I believe you can specify 18.04
        • I think I will be using this.  It’s a cheap, light portable device with 12 hour battery life that I can take on the go

THE NEWS

SECURITY UPDATE

  • NSA reveals SOMETHING about Russian hacks
  • Linux Malware and Securing Your System
    • CTT goes in early about preventive measures and turns his nose up at the idea that someone would be running kernels earlier than 3.7 because it was released in 2012. RHEL 6 is still on 2.6… Sure. For a desktop user, it’s probably not likely, but for Enterprise? The NSA and the FBI didn’t put out a report for grandma in her kitchen. They put it out for the military and other institutions that are slow moving. In some cases, RHEL 5 is still in use and in Extended Life Phase.
    • Don’t install untrusted kernel modules or unsigned kernels.
    • SecureBoot
    • CTT offers a script that does:
      • Turning on UFW
      • Limiting SSH (which prevents brute force/dictionary style attacks)
      • Opening 80/443
      • Denying everything else incoming
      • Allowing everything outgoing
    • The script is a little odd. While limiting SSH is good, much thought should be given to just using keys, and disabling password login altogether. Also, why open 80 and 443? You would really only need this if you’re hosting a website of some kind. Most tools use custom ports (i.e., Cockpit uses port 9090).
  • Alexa Can Be Hacked, Instagram Retains Deleted Data, Linux Malware Found By NSA & FBI – ThreatWire

Announcements:

Our next episode will be September 6, 2020 at 2 pm Central US Time, 7 pm UTC, 8 pm British Summer Time – https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Add Dallas Tx

Wrap-up:

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

  • Londoner for his suggestion to use timeanddate.com
  • 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.
]]> 4592 mintCast 342 – Security Theater https://mintcast.org/mintcast-342-security-theater/ Wed, 26 Aug 2020 04:49:31 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4588 Then, in our news, Pinta, Lutris and Mozilla
In security, we talk security recommendations and the NSA
Download
]]>

Download

We would like to welcome Owen Peery to the team. He’s our new editor!

1:40 Wanderings
46:32 News
1:05:05 Security
1:22:05 Outro

First up, in our Wanderings, I’ve been testing out a new keyboard, Tony Hughes tries to remove a finger (again), Joe has been soldering and reading, Moss has been adding more distros,

Then, in our news, Pinta, Lutris and Mozilla

In security, we talk security recommendations and the NSA

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Digging into some errors I got, last stream on Youtube. It was complaining that I was streaming at only 3500kbps. That was odd as I’ve always streamed at OBS’s default. Turns out, Youtube wants 4500kbps now. So, I cranked the video bitrate up to 6400 in OBS’s Output section. No errors!
    • Kernel 5.8 is smooth as silk
    • Got a new keyboard. A cheap mechanical with OUTEMU Red switches. Cost $35, but also came with a mouse pad and mouse. They’re all RGB of course, except for the mouse pad.
    • Been watching Star Trek Lower Decks. It’s hilarious. It’s a story of about 5 ensigns that work on the starship Cerritos. They’re not high ranking, and only get to do grunt work for the most part, but they find their niche and get their jobs done. I’ve never been much of a Trek fan, but this is seriously something I can see myself watching until the end of the series. It has the feel of Rick and Morty and Futurama fused together. Hijinks obviously ensue.
    • Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 1 Trailer
  • Tony H
    • So I managed to drill my finger in an accident while doing some work on the matchbox cars, it’s not good when a drill bit brakes while you are drilling a post out and you have the model held in your hand, the cut was very sore and the end of the finger is still numb from a little bit of nerve damage as a result. What with that and cutting myself while cooking my wife thinks I have a death wish.
    • As a result of the accident I haven’t been doing much in the way of restoration for the last couple of weeks but I have made some nice eBay buys which have resulted in the collection and spares to the restoration has grown a little larger, although I had to stop bidding on stuff as I wouldn’t have been around for any deliveries that may have arrived after I came away, it has probably saved me a few shekels.
    • For a little light relief I installed Ubuntu Touch on my OnePlus 1 and while it was a fairly painless process unlike trying to update Lineage OS to 17.1 on the same phone which I can’t get it to do, it is definitely NOT ready for prime time yet. All the apps seem to be web based and do not work very well, I was thinking of Using the phone as my Sat Nav for my car but as you need the internet even if it worked well, which it doesn’t then I would need to get a new sim card and data plan as it will not work on the GPS alone as it needs a web connection for the apps to work. I also tried to connect to the WiFi here at Woodbrooke and it will not connect to the login page to finish authorising access to the WiFi.
    • I’m continuing to play with Mint 20 Mate on the DHD laptop with the intention of this being my review for the September show. Given my findings so far It might be a short review as apart from the Snapd issue and a few programs being updated it is pretty much business as usual, so while I am here at Woodbrooke I’m having a look at a distro suggested by a listener, SparkyLinux and while it is based on Debian they do what Mint used to do with the LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) and base one of the spins on the testing branch with a warning that it is not for those wanting a stable system or are new to Linux. Just to note that both iso’s will fit on a 2Gb Flash drive (or less than 1GB if you opt for one of the stable minimal GUI spins). So if you have an old one kicking around you were wondering what to use it for, then maybe SparkyLinux could be an option.    
    • I wrote the 4th in my Full Circle Magazine series on podcast production the first of which was in issue 159 at the end of July. I’m not a natural writer but I have been enjoying sharing what I have learned since starting on mintCast and DHD.
  • Moss
    • I installed Gecko ROLLING to my desktop. So now I have ROLLING on my desktop and STATIC on my laptop (equivalent to openSUSE Tumbleweed and Leap, respectively). 
    • On the 15th, I installed KDE neon, also to my desktop. Oddly, the announcement that neon was available based on 20.04 did not mention that you would still be installing the 18.04 version, and then be greeted with the Upgrade button. It took a few more button pushes to get the upgrade started, but it ran beautifully. I then ran updates and installed some of my more common additions, including Stacer 1.10. Stacer ran great, but Discover popped up and said there was an update to it. I ran the update. And now Stacer wouldn’t load, it said “program not found”. So I reinstalled from my .deb package and it worked again… and Discover said there was an update again. I have posted to the KDE neon user forum to report this issue and ask how I can get Discover to ignore the update. Apparently they think an app in the repo is newer than the same app from a .deb file, but why it disables the program to run the update is beyond me. Note to self: Check the repo to see if an application is there before installing saved .deb files.
    • I now have only one free partition each on my desktop and laptop. And I’m starting to have memory issues — not my computer, me, trying to remember what all I have installed. Updating has already gotten beyond the “fun” level.
    • I am tempted to install Releax Linux to my system even though it’s only 0.5beta. This is a fully independent distro out of India, with a new package manager and everything. It sounds really exciting. Maybe I should dig up Tony Hughes’ instructions and learn how to install it in a VM.
    • I posted a new blog to LinuxQuestions.org.
    • I did some performing on Thursday the 20th on Eurofilk, which is now happening every other Thursday. I got to play with Cecilia Eng, first time for me and she’s a legend, and a total of 9 others in the Zoom room, including my friend K.J. Noren. This is the first performing I’ve done since about 2 weeks after my accident. My shoulder hurt a lot more afterward, but I seem to have gained mobility.
    • We’re about ⅔ of the way through Blood Rites, the 6th Dresden Files book. Dresden missed a huge hint when he had a major data download from Thomas; there is no explanation for that miss. We’re enjoying the book, we just wish Dresden could be more successful stopping people from dying.
  • Joe
    • Watched a lot of YouTube and did some soldering
    • Took a break for a few days from reading but still got some in
      • Up to book 20 in Drizzt
      • Demon Accords book 16
      • Big Damn Hero
        • Firefly book, surprisingly good
    • Soldered some headphones
      • New MMCX connectors came in and got them set up on 2 sets of headphones.
      • Only need to redo one of the connections at this point
    • Was informed that I missed the 8th book of the Incarnations of Immortality series by Piers Anthony.  Although I am more than a little disillusioned by his work since he uses it as a platform to push his ideology on age of consent.
      • Also the book does not exist in audio format from what I can see so if I do read it, it will have to be text aloud
    • Attempted to make the macro keyboard, followed the instructions exactly but was not able to get it working.
      • Rechecked my soldering several times but it was solid
      • Only about 6 of the 12 keys would work.  
      • So I took it apart down to the board on the keypad and did continuity tests on the whole thing
      • Bad board and a slightly different pinout than was in the instructions but the different pinout shouldn’t be a concern
      • I could try to solder directly to the board and to the pins but that seems a little crazy even for me.  Although if I get bored enough you never know.
      • I have ordered a couple of different types of keyboards to give another try using different methods
      • Right before the show a test set of 4 mechanical keys showed up and I was able to get them wired in place although I still need to wire the Promicro and I need to 3D-print the case for it
      • Thinking about ordering a set of 90 MX Cherry Blues and 3d printing everything else
  • Tony W
    • Refinishing my basement practice/rehearsal/studio/home office space
      • Installed carpet to cover concrete floor
      • Covered the one concrete wall in this room with drywall/heavy cloth, for now
      • Have insulation and drywall ready to go for remaining walls/ceilings
      • Will most likely get a permit from county before installing drywall over electrical, ductwork etc
      • This involved disassembling all of my tech, my podcast setup, etc and almost did not set back up before today’s podcast
    • Updated to Mint 20
      • Upgrade was fairly seamless, but had a couple minor issues
        • The update did break my Grub.  Reinstalled Grub very easily using MX Linux live USB Boot Repair (courtesy of Ventoy)
        • The version of Mumble installed from Software Manager didn’t work, had to install the Flatpak
      • Installed Linux via Crouton on Acer Chromebook 314
          • Crostini was great, but somewhat useless to me as there is no direct access to hardware (particularly USB audio devices) 
        • Crouton gives you full Linux desktop courtesy of chroot
        • Process to install:
          • Have to turn on Developer mode (which erases local data)
          • Follow instructions to install via crosh (Chrome terminal)
          • Once installed, to enter Linux desktop: Sudo enter-chroot startxfce4 (or sudo startxfce4 as a shortcut)
        • From there, Ctrl/Alt/Shift Forward and Ctrl/Alt/Shift/Back to switch between ChromeOS and XFCE (or desktop of your choice)
        • Default is XFCE but Cinnamon, KDE, e17, LXDE and Unity are also available 
        • IT WORKED!!!  My audio interface works perfectly with XFCE running on the Chromebook. 
          • Audacity, Mumble, OBS studio ready to go
        • Downsides: 
          • Developer Mode
          • Not supported – ChromeOS updates can break it
          • Default install is 16.04.  I believe you can specify 18.04
        • I think I will be using this.  It’s a cheap, light portable device with 12 hour battery life that I can take on the go

THE NEWS

SECURITY UPDATE

  • NSA reveals SOMETHING about Russian hacks
  • Linux Malware and Securing Your System
    • CTT goes in early about preventive measures and turns his nose up at the idea that someone would be running kernels earlier than 3.7 because it was released in 2012. RHEL 6 is still on 2.6… Sure. For a desktop user, it’s probably not likely, but for Enterprise? The NSA and the FBI didn’t put out a report for grandma in her kitchen. They put it out for the military and other institutions that are slow moving. In some cases, RHEL 5 is still in use and in Extended Life Phase.
    • Don’t install untrusted kernel modules or unsigned kernels.
    • SecureBoot
    • CTT offers a script that does:
      • Turning on UFW
      • Limiting SSH (which prevents brute force/dictionary style attacks)
      • Opening 80/443
      • Denying everything else incoming
      • Allowing everything outgoing
    • The script is a little odd. While limiting SSH is good, much thought should be given to just using keys, and disabling password login altogether. Also, why open 80 and 443? You would really only need this if you’re hosting a website of some kind. Most tools use custom ports (i.e., Cockpit uses port 9090).
  • Alexa Can Be Hacked, Instagram Retains Deleted Data, Linux Malware Found By NSA & FBI – ThreatWire

Announcements:

Our next episode will be September 6, 2020 at 2 pm Central US Time, 7 pm UTC, 8 pm British Summer Time – https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Add Dallas Tx

Wrap-up:

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

  • Londoner for his suggestion to use timeanddate.com
  • 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.
]]> 4588 mintCast 338 – Two Oh Snap (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-338-two-oh-snap-mp3/ Wed, 01 Jul 2020 04:44:18 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4504 Then, in the news, we focus on the new release of Linux Mint 20
In security, Ripple20
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Owen refurbishes, Tony prints new stuff, Moss has a panic attack, Joe attends a LUG, Bo games, and Leo upgrades to 20.

Then, in the news, we focus on the new release of Linux Mint 20

In security, Ripple20

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Owen
    • Continue to refurbish donated computers with older hardware, add RAM and SSDs, install Mint 19.3, and deliver them to families in need at my school
    • Won an Innovative Teacher award from the Fab Foundation and Chevron for this project which also came with a $1000 cash award, which also allowed me to purchase more/better RAM and SSDs
    • 3d printing PPE like face shields and ear savers
    • Ordered 2 new 3d printers via a Kickstarter campaign, one for me, one for school
    • Test driving Mint 20.04 beta after finally separating my /home directory and OS into different partitions, and a few days of being really lost in the weeds, but I had a backup so I knew it would all be OK
    • Attended a virtual STEM conference in June called Inclusive STEM and CS
    • Been learning how to use Kdenlive by using an action camera on top of my helmet and going on different bike rides each day
    • Slowly working on installing motioneyeOS on a Raspberry Pi with one of the new fancy cameras to setup a security camera due to a recent arson at my condo complex
    • Exploring Ubuntu Studio and am almost certain my main machine at home will to to Ubuntu Studio for 20.10 when it’ll be Plasma by default
    • Setup a Ventoy USB stick and started installing all.the.ISOs.in.the.world.
    • Working my way through a lynda.com course on Bash scripting to get better using the command line
    • Staying sane during shelter in place by taking a bicycle ride everyday, not new since I”m a bike commuter for almost 2 decades now, having a standing Sunday morning Zoom call with friends from around the world, walking my dog further than before and more frequently, using the kids playground at the school next to my home to work out on, and trying to think each day of at least one thing I”m grateful for.
    • Gardening, community garden, gardening on our terrace, and gardening in the front of our building
  • Leo
    • Upgraded to Linux Mint 20 on the laptop I’m recording on!
    • Still need to do the desktop, but have a few things going on this weekend, so I may not make it.
    • I’m on a new show! Linux User Space
  • Tony H
    • Baking and playing with my model cars, I also won a few eBay auctions of some nice models to go straight into the collection. Today I spent the afternoon with my sister and her husband as it was their 1st wedding anniversary and I restored a little matchbox Rolls Royce model and painted it up as a wedding saloon which they missed out on as they got married on a cruise ship last summer. My sister is into bead jewelry making so I thought something a little crafty would be appreciated, and they both loved it, so my model restoration hobby has a new fan. 
    • I’ve recently been recording a series of episodes for HPR about my diecast model restorations and I have been having problems with Firefox not letting me reserve a slot in the HPR schedule to upload the show too. It returns an error message. However If I use Chromium to book the slot, not a problem, I can then go back into Firefox and do the remainder of the process from there. It used to work just fine, I’m wondering if my ad blocking plugins might be the issue?  
    • The big story for me this week is, since the last show I purchased a new colour Laser printer, the HP Color Laser 150nw, so I can produce high quality decals for my models that require them. I bought this printer as I was led to believe that it had Linux support. I set it up, downloaded the HP driver package HPLIP from the Developers page which is a more up to date version than that in Mint 19.3, and I thought great, we are good to go. No this did not recognise that the printer was present even after restarting the printer several times with the USB cable attached to the PC. So I went into CUPS which prior to installation of the HPLIP package had not had any idea what this HP printer was, it now recognised it was there and came up with the model and a recommended driver which I installed. I tried a test print the light on the printer starts to flash but apart from a little noise from it as the paper feed whirls around nothing else happens. Several attempts later I started to suspect I had a faulty printer, but I had one last option before I gave up. Here’s where I have to say the dreaded ‘Windows word’ I got out my Dell 7250 laptop that has W10 installed as a test machine for troubleshooting windows issues for other folk, I plugged in the printer and it picked it up right away and started to install the driver, after installing I printed the test page and it worked. In one way I was relieved as my $160 / £130 I spent for the printer is not wasted but I’m more than a little disgruntled that I have to have a Windows laptop to drive the thing instead of just working on my Mint 19.3 box like it should!!!! I then had an idea and booted into Ubuntu Studio 20.04 and it picked the printer up without the addition of any other software so the moral of the story is run the latest OS you can if you want your printer to be supported in Linux.
  • Moss
    • Distrohoppers’ Digest 014 is out. We’d love to have everyone listen to it. Tony and I have a great time doing this little monthly hop.
    • Sometime after the last show was in the can but before we did Distrohoppers’ Digest, I accessed my two machines and did what can only be called Adventures In GPartEd. My desktop box went from 2 partitions to 3, and my laptop went from 3 to 4, complete with cleaning up unnecessary partitions and moving things around so much that if GPartEd *were* dangerous to use, I would have lost lots of data. It is of interest to note my desktop’s hard drive somehow had both EFI and Grub partitions; I removed and reallocated the latter, and also increased the size of my swap partition. Everything works. I’m waiting for all the distros which have been promised, including a new openSUSE, and Slackware 15.
    • Over the past couple days, I have been trying the new Mint 20 on the laptop. I overwrote the Manjaro partition… I tried Cinnamon, but found something mildly upsetting in yesterday’s show meeting and installed MATE instead, then had a couple minor catastrophes causing me to reinstall MATE… TWICE… so I was up all night again. When I get Mint 20 up to the level I need for working, probably today or tomorrow, I will reinstall Manjaro over the Mint 19.3 partition… and will lose the GRUB niceties of 19.3, which were removed in 20 because they caused some machines to not boot. I guess I can make OpenMandriva the Grubholder then, so I can still have a pretty boot menu.  For the record, my memory use in 20 Cinnamon was 1.7 Gb at rest, where in MATE it’s about 770 Mb. Both of those are high for these desktops, but I assume they will work on getting it down soon.
    • I am making an effort to use Bodhi for more of my daily stuff, rather than treating it like a fun curiosity. It is interesting to learn what stuff goes where in a superlight desktop, very different from what I’ve been used to in heavier desktops like XFCE. For instance, I created Key Bindings to turn my touchpad on and off. What I mean by “superlight”: Stacer reports 324 Mb in use with only Stacer open, and 14 Mb of that is Stacer itself. We usually call a desktop “light” if it has 550-700 Mb in use at rest.
    • I still don’t have a distro to review for next Distrohoppers’, but Mint should be out soon. I already have downloaded what should be the final, but they haven’t announced it yet.
    • I bought a new tablet, a Hyundai Technologies Koral 10×3. I was trying to order a PineTab but my wife blocked the purchase. It turns out she thought I was just trying to order another Raspberry Pi, and then, when she approved me buying it, it was sold out. Then a friend told me about her tablet, and I got excited and bought one… I probably jumped at it too quickly, and I do have a bit of buyers’ remorse, having read a few more reviews, but I’ll wait until it arrives before I bad-mouth it… or talk it up…
    • I’ve been running around with all this extra Covid money from Congress, getting  clothes and bedsheets and all the things we have absolutely needed but couldn’t afford, and spending out of pocket for my wife’s health care, which we previously had no money for and still can’t get insurance for. Also due to the Covid money, we are not currently eligible for the various low-income healthcare programs. I’m  cleaning up debt, most of which was caused by importing my wife from Canada — all the money the government and lawyers need for that to happen. Everything’s done except the debt reduction program I’m in, which will be over in less than a year. But all this good money is scheduled to end July 31, which will mean a $540 per week dropoff, and there are no legal jobs in sight.  I can’t even work in my previous employment, as I’m more of a driver risk, have a still-injured shoulder, and otherwise I’m still 67 years old. This is the first time in my life I haven’t been stuck at around 140% of poverty level, and it’s ending in 33 days.
    • As I haven’t been sleeping in bed since the accident, our Dresden Files reading has dropped off, but we’re pretty deep in the 5th book right now.
    • Enough of this. Let’s get to Joe.
  • Joe
    • Attended a virtual LUG
      • It was interesting
      • It was nice to get to see all the people that I normally hang out with at the LUG even if it was over Zoom
      • Got to help a bunch of people and learn a couple of things about top and htop
    • Jim Butcher Codex Alera
      • Good series.  The last book is the weakest but still a really good conclusion
      • Remember the new book comes out next month for the Dresden Files
        • The first few chapters are available online although i have not read them as i would rather wait for the whole book
    • Larry Correia 
      • Grimnoir
        • Trilogy with some short stories attached.
        • Alternate history book post WW2
      • Monster Hunter
        • Really good series that I keep going back to
      • Saga of the Forgotten Warrior
        • Only two books in the series so far but I am liking it
    • Book 14 of the Nate Temple series.  
      • I thought the series was starting to lag but it seems to be picking up again.  Really good book
    • Decided that if i am going to use the Pi as an sshfs gateway then I should make the internet connection a bit more stable.  The Powerline ethernet adapter that I use doesn’t provide much speed and has many drops.  I could possibly code my way around that being a major issue but I would like more reliability.  I have a few wifi adapters that i could try out but my set top box in the garage has a solid connection and good speeds on 5 GHz so i am going to use internet sharing on that to a network switch.  https://www.tecmint.com/share-internet-in-linux/
      • Also found out that the if up and if down folders do not work so i tried dhclient-enter-hooks.d
      • Which i have not been able to get to work so far
      • Trying out systemctl which i am seeing a response from using the simple statements that i was using before.  I am able to keep that service running +with an extremely simple while loop but it currently lacks flexibility on failures so i will need to write some loops that are dependant on the response from pings
    • I was able to print a mount for my 7130 that allows me to keep it directly under the monitor that I use for work.  This allows me to watch fix it videos during the slow times or when i am doing something routine.  As well as do things like type up my bi-weekly wanderings during my breaks.
  • Bo
    • ESO on stadia
      • PC and Steam accounts
      • Performance

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE

  •  Ripple20 Is a Pack of Almost 20 Bugs Affecting Millions of Devices
    • Specifically, it’s pinned to a service called Treck with DNS support
    • The bugs can cause Denial of Service all the way up to Remote Code Execution
    • Affected devices can be just about anything since this is a supply chain flaw.
      • Essentially, a vulnerable piece of software is made available by, in this case Treck, and it is then taken by manufacturers and used in TONS of devices to add additional functionality without having to write code themselves.
      • Printers, Uninterruptible Power Supplies, Smart home thingies like thermostats and light bulbs. This library is truly pervasive.
    • Update your Treck libraries to 6.0.1.67 and all is well for every bug that’s part of Ripple20.
    • Easy right? Well, no, actually. When’s the last time you updated your smart light bulb? Your UPS? This problem will be with us for years. How many people do you think will hear these advisories? It’s been out for almost two weeks at the time of this recording.
    • Folks, it really is time to ask yourself if it’s worth having someone know everything about you, or take control of your network in exchange for being able to shut off a light from two rooms away.
    • NanoLeaf light panels, the app allows you to download other people’s light patterns and put them on

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.
]]> 4504 mintCast 338 – Two Oh Snap https://mintcast.org/mintcast-338-two-oh-snap/ Wed, 01 Jul 2020 04:25:31 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4499 Then, in the news, we focus on the new release of Linux Mint 20
In security, Ripple20
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Owen refurbishes, Tony prints new stuff, Moss has a panic attack, Joe attends a LUG, Bo games, and Leo upgrades to 20.

Then, in the news, we focus on the new release of Linux Mint 20

In security, Ripple20

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS: 

  • Owen
    • Continue to refurbish donated computers with older hardware, add RAM and SSDs, install Mint 19.3, and deliver them to families in need at my school
    • Won an Innovative Teacher award from the Fab Foundation and Chevron for this project which also came with a $1000 cash award, which also allowed me to purchase more/better RAM and SSDs
    • 3d printing PPE like face shields and ear savers
    • Ordered 2 new 3d printers via a Kickstarter campaign, one for me, one for school
    • Test driving Mint 20.04 beta after finally separating my /home directory and OS into different partitions, and a few days of being really lost in the weeds, but I had a backup so I knew it would all be OK
    • Attended a virtual STEM conference in June called Inclusive STEM and CS
    • Been learning how to use Kdenlive by using an action camera on top of my helmet and going on different bike rides each day
    • Slowly working on installing motioneyeOS on a Raspberry Pi with one of the new fancy cameras to setup a security camera due to a recent arson at my condo complex
    • Exploring Ubuntu Studio and am almost certain my main machine at home will to to Ubuntu Studio for 20.10 when it’ll be Plasma by default
    • Setup a Ventoy USB stick and started installing all.the.ISOs.in.the.world.
    • Working my way through a lynda.com course on Bash scripting to get better using the command line
    • Staying sane during shelter in place by taking a bicycle ride everyday, not new since I”m a bike commuter for almost 2 decades now, having a standing Sunday morning Zoom call with friends from around the world, walking my dog further than before and more frequently, using the kids playground at the school next to my home to work out on, and trying to think each day of at least one thing I”m grateful for.
    • Gardening, community garden, gardening on our terrace, and gardening in the front of our building
  • Leo
    • Upgraded to Linux Mint 20 on the laptop I’m recording on!
    • Still need to do the desktop, but have a few things going on this weekend, so I may not make it.
    • I’m on a new show! Linux User Space
  • Tony H
    • Baking and playing with my model cars, I also won a few eBay auctions of some nice models to go straight into the collection. Today I spent the afternoon with my sister and her husband as it was their 1st wedding anniversary and I restored a little matchbox Rolls Royce model and painted it up as a wedding saloon which they missed out on as they got married on a cruise ship last summer. My sister is into bead jewelry making so I thought something a little crafty would be appreciated, and they both loved it, so my model restoration hobby has a new fan. 
    • I’ve recently been recording a series of episodes for HPR about my diecast model restorations and I have been having problems with Firefox not letting me reserve a slot in the HPR schedule to upload the show too. It returns an error message. However If I use Chromium to book the slot, not a problem, I can then go back into Firefox and do the remainder of the process from there. It used to work just fine, I’m wondering if my ad blocking plugins might be the issue?  
    • The big story for me this week is, since the last show I purchased a new colour Laser printer, the HP Color Laser 150nw, so I can produce high quality decals for my models that require them. I bought this printer as I was led to believe that it had Linux support. I set it up, downloaded the HP driver package HPLIP from the Developers page which is a more up to date version than that in Mint 19.3, and I thought great, we are good to go. No this did not recognise that the printer was present even after restarting the printer several times with the USB cable attached to the PC. So I went into CUPS which prior to installation of the HPLIP package had not had any idea what this HP printer was, it now recognised it was there and came up with the model and a recommended driver which I installed. I tried a test print the light on the printer starts to flash but apart from a little noise from it as the paper feed whirls around nothing else happens. Several attempts later I started to suspect I had a faulty printer, but I had one last option before I gave up. Here’s where I have to say the dreaded ‘Windows word’ I got out my Dell 7250 laptop that has W10 installed as a test machine for troubleshooting windows issues for other folk, I plugged in the printer and it picked it up right away and started to install the driver, after installing I printed the test page and it worked. In one way I was relieved as my $160 / £130 I spent for the printer is not wasted but I’m more than a little disgruntled that I have to have a Windows laptop to drive the thing instead of just working on my Mint 19.3 box like it should!!!! I then had an idea and booted into Ubuntu Studio 20.04 and it picked the printer up without the addition of any other software so the moral of the story is run the latest OS you can if you want your printer to be supported in Linux.
  • Moss
    • Distrohoppers’ Digest 014 is out. We’d love to have everyone listen to it. Tony and I have a great time doing this little monthly hop.
    • Sometime after the last show was in the can but before we did Distrohoppers’ Digest, I accessed my two machines and did what can only be called Adventures In GPartEd. My desktop box went from 2 partitions to 3, and my laptop went from 3 to 4, complete with cleaning up unnecessary partitions and moving things around so much that if GPartEd *were* dangerous to use, I would have lost lots of data. It is of interest to note my desktop’s hard drive somehow had both EFI and Grub partitions; I removed and reallocated the latter, and also increased the size of my swap partition. Everything works. I’m waiting for all the distros which have been promised, including a new openSUSE, and Slackware 15.
    • Over the past couple days, I have been trying the new Mint 20 on the laptop. I overwrote the Manjaro partition… I tried Cinnamon, but found something mildly upsetting in yesterday’s show meeting and installed MATE instead, then had a couple minor catastrophes causing me to reinstall MATE… TWICE… so I was up all night again. When I get Mint 20 up to the level I need for working, probably today or tomorrow, I will reinstall Manjaro over the Mint 19.3 partition… and will lose the GRUB niceties of 19.3, which were removed in 20 because they caused some machines to not boot. I guess I can make OpenMandriva the Grubholder then, so I can still have a pretty boot menu.  For the record, my memory use in 20 Cinnamon was 1.7 Gb at rest, where in MATE it’s about 770 Mb. Both of those are high for these desktops, but I assume they will work on getting it down soon.
    • I am making an effort to use Bodhi for more of my daily stuff, rather than treating it like a fun curiosity. It is interesting to learn what stuff goes where in a superlight desktop, very different from what I’ve been used to in heavier desktops like XFCE. For instance, I created Key Bindings to turn my touchpad on and off. What I mean by “superlight”: Stacer reports 324 Mb in use with only Stacer open, and 14 Mb of that is Stacer itself. We usually call a desktop “light” if it has 550-700 Mb in use at rest.
    • I still don’t have a distro to review for next Distrohoppers’, but Mint should be out soon. I already have downloaded what should be the final, but they haven’t announced it yet.
    • I bought a new tablet, a Hyundai Technologies Koral 10×3. I was trying to order a PineTab but my wife blocked the purchase. It turns out she thought I was just trying to order another Raspberry Pi, and then, when she approved me buying it, it was sold out. Then a friend told me about her tablet, and I got excited and bought one… I probably jumped at it too quickly, and I do have a bit of buyers’ remorse, having read a few more reviews, but I’ll wait until it arrives before I bad-mouth it… or talk it up…
    • I’ve been running around with all this extra Covid money from Congress, getting  clothes and bedsheets and all the things we have absolutely needed but couldn’t afford, and spending out of pocket for my wife’s health care, which we previously had no money for and still can’t get insurance for. Also due to the Covid money, we are not currently eligible for the various low-income healthcare programs. I’m  cleaning up debt, most of which was caused by importing my wife from Canada — all the money the government and lawyers need for that to happen. Everything’s done except the debt reduction program I’m in, which will be over in less than a year. But all this good money is scheduled to end July 31, which will mean a $540 per week dropoff, and there are no legal jobs in sight.  I can’t even work in my previous employment, as I’m more of a driver risk, have a still-injured shoulder, and otherwise I’m still 67 years old. This is the first time in my life I haven’t been stuck at around 140% of poverty level, and it’s ending in 33 days.
    • As I haven’t been sleeping in bed since the accident, our Dresden Files reading has dropped off, but we’re pretty deep in the 5th book right now.
    • Enough of this. Let’s get to Joe.
  • Joe
    • Attended a virtual LUG
      • It was interesting
      • It was nice to get to see all the people that I normally hang out with at the LUG even if it was over Zoom
      • Got to help a bunch of people and learn a couple of things about top and htop
    • Jim Butcher Codex Alera
      • Good series.  The last book is the weakest but still a really good conclusion
      • Remember the new book comes out next month for the Dresden Files
        • The first few chapters are available online although i have not read them as i would rather wait for the whole book
    • Larry Correia 
      • Grimnoir
        • Trilogy with some short stories attached.
        • Alternate history book post WW2
      • Monster Hunter
        • Really good series that I keep going back to
      • Saga of the Forgotten Warrior
        • Only two books in the series so far but I am liking it
    • Book 14 of the Nate Temple series.  
      • I thought the series was starting to lag but it seems to be picking up again.  Really good book
    • Decided that if i am going to use the Pi as an sshfs gateway then I should make the internet connection a bit more stable.  The Powerline ethernet adapter that I use doesn’t provide much speed and has many drops.  I could possibly code my way around that being a major issue but I would like more reliability.  I have a few wifi adapters that i could try out but my set top box in the garage has a solid connection and good speeds on 5 GHz so i am going to use internet sharing on that to a network switch.  https://www.tecmint.com/share-internet-in-linux/
      • Also found out that the if up and if down folders do not work so i tried dhclient-enter-hooks.d
      • Which i have not been able to get to work so far
      • Trying out systemctl which i am seeing a response from using the simple statements that i was using before.  I am able to keep that service running +with an extremely simple while loop but it currently lacks flexibility on failures so i will need to write some loops that are dependant on the response from pings
    • I was able to print a mount for my 7130 that allows me to keep it directly under the monitor that I use for work.  This allows me to watch fix it videos during the slow times or when i am doing something routine.  As well as do things like type up my bi-weekly wanderings during my breaks.
  • Bo
    • ESO on stadia
      • PC and Steam accounts
      • Performance

THE NEWS: 

SECURITY UPDATE

  •  Ripple20 Is a Pack of Almost 20 Bugs Affecting Millions of Devices
    • Specifically, it’s pinned to a service called Treck with DNS support
    • The bugs can cause Denial of Service all the way up to Remote Code Execution
    • Affected devices can be just about anything since this is a supply chain flaw.
      • Essentially, a vulnerable piece of software is made available by, in this case Treck, and it is then taken by manufacturers and used in TONS of devices to add additional functionality without having to write code themselves.
      • Printers, Uninterruptible Power Supplies, Smart home thingies like thermostats and light bulbs. This library is truly pervasive.
    • Update your Treck libraries to 6.0.1.67 and all is well for every bug that’s part of Ripple20.
    • Easy right? Well, no, actually. When’s the last time you updated your smart light bulb? Your UPS? This problem will be with us for years. How many people do you think will hear these advisories? It’s been out for almost two weeks at the time of this recording.
    • Folks, it really is time to ask yourself if it’s worth having someone know everything about you, or take control of your network in exchange for being able to shut off a light from two rooms away.
    • NanoLeaf light panels, the app allows you to download other people’s light patterns and put them on

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.
]]> 4499 mintCast 334.5 – Fossa Fuel (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-334-5-fossa-fuel-mp3/ Wed, 13 May 2020 04:13:26 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4396 And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we talk about the versions of Ubuntu 20.04 we’re playing with.

And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS: 

Let’s Talk About Ubuntu 20.04 (See OMGubuntu article on 20.04 flavors)

  • Ubuntu (Gnome) Features
    • Linux Kernel 5.4
    • Faster boot speeds
    • OEM logo displayed during boot
    • Improved appearance
    • Dark theme
    • Fractional scaling setting
    • Ships with GNOME 3.36
    • Redesigned login screen
    • New lock screen
    • Snap-based Ubuntu Software app
    • Improved GNOME Shell performance
    • Refined ZFS install support
    • Game mode added to the archives
    • Joe – Installed Ubuntu 20.04 on my 7140 tablet with gnome.  Had some small problems with Gnome and the touchpad left and right click not wanting to work although both did work with an external mouse.  So I installed Cinnamon and Mate and my touchpad worked fine in both.
      • Rotation also worked without a hitch in Gnome and Cinnamon but I did not search for the setting in Mate since I will use that with X2go for remote access
      • Haven’t set up my normal scripting for file movement and sshfs yet but it should work fine. 
      • Noticed a series of games already installed.  Very Windows XP style
      • Turning on touchpad scrolling did not work until after reboot
      • I also didn’t like the touchpad acceleration.  After I adjusted it I did not notice any change until after a reboot and then it was fine
      • Boot times are fast and smooth although there is a device related problem with reboot
      • Looks beautiful and runs smooth
      • Still haven’t installed UKUU and upgraded to the most recent kernel
      • But I did check out snap which is built in.  works great. 
        • Installed the snap for Standard Notes and Mumble and was able to use auto completion with no issues and they immediately were available in the start menu
    • Leo
      • Installed Ubuntu 20.04 Beta on the T450s. This laptop!
      • Tried to stick with the default install on all of the apps I use. This meant installing lots and lots of things via Snap. The only reason I tend to shy away from Snaps is the theming issues (the wonky looking cursor, off-looking GTK Themes, and slow startup times).
      • Talked to Martin Wimpress about these on BDLL last night and got some clarification about where the Ubuntu team is headed. These issues are absolutely on their radar, but got pushed back for some more technical issues that needed to land in 20.04. These issues are now a priority again and will land soon!
      • Another thing we ended up talking about was the fact that all desktop installations of Ubuntu are automatically set up to take the HWE kernel when it drops. So no more confusion about whether you’re on a point release or not and what that means.
      • Historically, if you installed with 18.04, you didn’t get the HWE kernel. You could opt in, but required installing a couple of packages. If you installed 18.04.1 or later, you got the HWE kernel automatically.
      • Stuck with it until a little after release when the Gnome desktop really started to grind on me. It was great overall, and fine on my desktop, but on my laptop, the animations were struggling to stay smooth. I’m petty enough to allow that to be a game breaker. I know that to get things to look “nicer” that sometimes comes with more animations. I just figured that a business-class laptop from 2015 would be able to handle it!
  • Ubuntu MATE Features
      • Ubuntu MATE 20.04 features include better support for HiDPI rendering throughout the UI, minimised window previews in the task bar, and new Notification Indicator settings (including a do-not-disturb mode).
      • The distro has decided to drop Compiz and Compton from the default install as they’re no longer considered necessary (and this is an LTS release).
  • There’s also a new GTK frontend for the fwupd application. This will make it easy to check for firmware updates for connected devices and apply said updates if available.
    • Finally, all the goodies present in the upstream MATE desktop 1.24 release are present here.
    • Who on the team has tried it?
    • Moss’ biggest peeve: The icons for “End the Current Session”, “Lock Screen”, and “Turn Off the Device” are not evocative of those features in any way and are tinier than ever. This is a serious problem for visually impaired people, and the icons themselves are an issue for everyone. Question: Is this a MATE issue, or just Ubuntu MATE?
      • Otherwise, this felt like the old, familiar shirt you’ve worn for the last 10 years when you just want to relax. Nothing feels new, everything works.
  • Kubuntu Features
  • For instance, there’s a new colour emoji selector, better theming of GTK apps, refined app and system notifications, and a system tray toggle for the Night Color option.
    • A swathe of updated KDE applications are available through Discover (the software store), including newer versions of Kdenlive, KDE Connect, and Latte Dock.
    • there’s a new default music player in Kubuntu 20.04. The distro has chosen to switch from the Qt-based Cantata to the Qt-based Elisa as of this release.
    • Moss – I installed Kubuntu 20.04 on my Galago Pro. 
    • I tried to use Clementine music player in Kubuntu 20.04, I was using it in the beta. But it seemed to freak out to the point of appearing to wipe my music drive and bombarding me with tons of notifications, but in fact just freaked out all by itself; the drive is fine. That gave me a chance to update my backups. I saw later on YouTube where sneekylinux had the same issue with Clementine on Xubuntu, and switched to Strawberry Player, so I did the same. I’m also having some issues with Konsole in Kubuntu, it looks like it tears under each line almost like thin underlining. Might be my resolution.
    • Leo
      • Moved to Kubuntu 20.04 and have been there ever since. Animations are smooth, no slowdowns that I notice, and TERMINAL. BLUR. So, so so so nice. It’s a touch that I didn’t realize made the terminal feel “premium.”
    • Tony W briefly, only from live USB)
      • Ran just fine on my low powered Dell 7130 tablet.  No performance issues, touchpad/touchscreen etc all work well
  • Xubuntu Features
    • No release notes for new features
    • There is a new dark theme
    • Who on the team has tried it?
  • Ubuntu Budgie Features
    • Chief amongst these is a brand new application menu inspired by Slingshot, the stock app launcher used in elementary OS. The app launcher has an optional ‘power strip’ mode which embeds session management buttons into the app launcher, beside the search box.
    • There’s also a new, native Network Manager applet for managing wired and wi-fi web connections, better HiDPI support, a new ‘desktop layout’ chooser, and better ‘Window Shuffler’ too.
    • App wise the Ubuntu Budgie team has replaced GNOME MPV with its successor, Celluloid, and adds the (really terrific) Drawing app to its default software roster.
  • Ubuntu Studio Features
    • The audio plugin selection is expanded further, with a handful of new plugins included for audio production needs.
    • MyPaint returns to the default install, where it sits alongside the latest version of the GIMP image editor.
    • The Ubuntu Studio Controls utility now lets you assign names to pulseaudio-Jack bridges and has been organized a touch to make it take up less screen space.
  • Who on the team has tried it? (Moss, briefly)
    • Tony W (briefly, only from live USB)
      • 3.6GB ISO is actually not bad at all, for everything it comes with
      • IT LOOKS AMAZING!
      • I am LOVING the selection of pre-installed goodies!
      • Video goodies – It comes with OBS pre-installed, along with both Kdenlive and Openshot
      • Audio – more than you can shake a stick at.  
        • Ardour, Audacity, 
        • Loads of custom soundcard support, including the ENVY24 utility that my old school sound card/audio interface needs
        • Guitarix, rackarack, a looper, multiple drum samplers, the list goes on
        • Multiple media players – VLC, Parole, Xjadeo
        • BONUS – KDE Connect!
  • Lubuntu Features
  • First Lubuntu LTS with LXQt
    • Who on the team has tried it? (Moss attempted to install it but couldn’t get past Calamares UEFI installer requirements for some reason)
  • Ubuntu Kylin Features
    • new Qt-based desktop environment
    • Who on the team has tried it?
  • Ubuntu Cinnamon Respin
    • Features?
    • Who on the team has tried it?
  • Ubuntu Lumina Respin
    • Based on Lumina from TrueOS
  • Overall Issues with Ubuntu 20.04
    • We have commented on the fact that this is a new LTS. Several apps did not work properly in 18.04 which worked fine in 16.04 and had to be reworked, and in this vein several users have noted a problem with Clementine music player. Any others noted?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Londoner (Telegram)
  • K Wisher (mewe)
  • x1cygnus, Scott (Telegram)
  • Dale Miracle (Telegram)
  • Dave W. (Email)
  • Larry P. (Email)

http://170.187.156.171/2020/04/29/mintcast-333-5-efired/

  • John Wallis Security Saga

CHECK THIS OUT!

Announcements: 

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, May 17, 2020. That’s 8 pm 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.
]]> 4396 mintCast 334.5 – Fossa Fuel https://mintcast.org/mintcast-334-5-fossa-fuel/ Wed, 13 May 2020 04:12:48 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4394 And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we talk about the versions of Ubuntu 20.04 we’re playing with.

And finally, our listener feedback and a couple suggestions

LINUX INNARDS: 

Let’s Talk About Ubuntu 20.04 (See OMGubuntu article on 20.04 flavors)

  • Ubuntu (Gnome) Features
    • Linux Kernel 5.4
    • Faster boot speeds
    • OEM logo displayed during boot
    • Improved appearance
    • Dark theme
    • Fractional scaling setting
    • Ships with GNOME 3.36
    • Redesigned login screen
    • New lock screen
    • Snap-based Ubuntu Software app
    • Improved GNOME Shell performance
    • Refined ZFS install support
    • Game mode added to the archives
    • Joe – Installed Ubuntu 20.04 on my 7140 tablet with gnome.  Had some small problems with Gnome and the touchpad left and right click not wanting to work although both did work with an external mouse.  So I installed Cinnamon and Mate and my touchpad worked fine in both.
      • Rotation also worked without a hitch in Gnome and Cinnamon but I did not search for the setting in Mate since I will use that with X2go for remote access
      • Haven’t set up my normal scripting for file movement and sshfs yet but it should work fine. 
      • Noticed a series of games already installed.  Very Windows XP style
      • Turning on touchpad scrolling did not work until after reboot
      • I also didn’t like the touchpad acceleration.  After I adjusted it I did not notice any change until after a reboot and then it was fine
      • Boot times are fast and smooth although there is a device related problem with reboot
      • Looks beautiful and runs smooth
      • Still haven’t installed UKUU and upgraded to the most recent kernel
      • But I did check out snap which is built in.  works great. 
        • Installed the snap for Standard Notes and Mumble and was able to use auto completion with no issues and they immediately were available in the start menu
    • Leo
      • Installed Ubuntu 20.04 Beta on the T450s. This laptop!
      • Tried to stick with the default install on all of the apps I use. This meant installing lots and lots of things via Snap. The only reason I tend to shy away from Snaps is the theming issues (the wonky looking cursor, off-looking GTK Themes, and slow startup times).
      • Talked to Martin Wimpress about these on BDLL last night and got some clarification about where the Ubuntu team is headed. These issues are absolutely on their radar, but got pushed back for some more technical issues that needed to land in 20.04. These issues are now a priority again and will land soon!
      • Another thing we ended up talking about was the fact that all desktop installations of Ubuntu are automatically set up to take the HWE kernel when it drops. So no more confusion about whether you’re on a point release or not and what that means.
      • Historically, if you installed with 18.04, you didn’t get the HWE kernel. You could opt in, but required installing a couple of packages. If you installed 18.04.1 or later, you got the HWE kernel automatically.
      • Stuck with it until a little after release when the Gnome desktop really started to grind on me. It was great overall, and fine on my desktop, but on my laptop, the animations were struggling to stay smooth. I’m petty enough to allow that to be a game breaker. I know that to get things to look “nicer” that sometimes comes with more animations. I just figured that a business-class laptop from 2015 would be able to handle it!
  • Ubuntu MATE Features
      • Ubuntu MATE 20.04 features include better support for HiDPI rendering throughout the UI, minimised window previews in the task bar, and new Notification Indicator settings (including a do-not-disturb mode).
      • The distro has decided to drop Compiz and Compton from the default install as they’re no longer considered necessary (and this is an LTS release).
  • There’s also a new GTK frontend for the fwupd application. This will make it easy to check for firmware updates for connected devices and apply said updates if available.
    • Finally, all the goodies present in the upstream MATE desktop 1.24 release are present here.
    • Who on the team has tried it?
    • Moss’ biggest peeve: The icons for “End the Current Session”, “Lock Screen”, and “Turn Off the Device” are not evocative of those features in any way and are tinier than ever. This is a serious problem for visually impaired people, and the icons themselves are an issue for everyone. Question: Is this a MATE issue, or just Ubuntu MATE?
      • Otherwise, this felt like the old, familiar shirt you’ve worn for the last 10 years when you just want to relax. Nothing feels new, everything works.
  • Kubuntu Features
  • For instance, there’s a new colour emoji selector, better theming of GTK apps, refined app and system notifications, and a system tray toggle for the Night Color option.
    • A swathe of updated KDE applications are available through Discover (the software store), including newer versions of Kdenlive, KDE Connect, and Latte Dock.
    • there’s a new default music player in Kubuntu 20.04. The distro has chosen to switch from the Qt-based Cantata to the Qt-based Elisa as of this release.
    • Moss – I installed Kubuntu 20.04 on my Galago Pro. 
    • I tried to use Clementine music player in Kubuntu 20.04, I was using it in the beta. But it seemed to freak out to the point of appearing to wipe my music drive and bombarding me with tons of notifications, but in fact just freaked out all by itself; the drive is fine. That gave me a chance to update my backups. I saw later on YouTube where sneekylinux had the same issue with Clementine on Xubuntu, and switched to Strawberry Player, so I did the same. I’m also having some issues with Konsole in Kubuntu, it looks like it tears under each line almost like thin underlining. Might be my resolution.
    • Leo
      • Moved to Kubuntu 20.04 and have been there ever since. Animations are smooth, no slowdowns that I notice, and TERMINAL. BLUR. So, so so so nice. It’s a touch that I didn’t realize made the terminal feel “premium.”
    • Tony W briefly, only from live USB)
      • Ran just fine on my low powered Dell 7130 tablet.  No performance issues, touchpad/touchscreen etc all work well
  • Xubuntu Features
    • No release notes for new features
    • There is a new dark theme
    • Who on the team has tried it?
  • Ubuntu Budgie Features
    • Chief amongst these is a brand new application menu inspired by Slingshot, the stock app launcher used in elementary OS. The app launcher has an optional ‘power strip’ mode which embeds session management buttons into the app launcher, beside the search box.
    • There’s also a new, native Network Manager applet for managing wired and wi-fi web connections, better HiDPI support, a new ‘desktop layout’ chooser, and better ‘Window Shuffler’ too.
    • App wise the Ubuntu Budgie team has replaced GNOME MPV with its successor, Celluloid, and adds the (really terrific) Drawing app to its default software roster.
  • Ubuntu Studio Features
    • The audio plugin selection is expanded further, with a handful of new plugins included for audio production needs.
    • MyPaint returns to the default install, where it sits alongside the latest version of the GIMP image editor.
    • The Ubuntu Studio Controls utility now lets you assign names to pulseaudio-Jack bridges and has been organized a touch to make it take up less screen space.
  • Who on the team has tried it? (Moss, briefly)
    • Tony W (briefly, only from live USB)
      • 3.6GB ISO is actually not bad at all, for everything it comes with
      • IT LOOKS AMAZING!
      • I am LOVING the selection of pre-installed goodies!
      • Video goodies – It comes with OBS pre-installed, along with both Kdenlive and Openshot
      • Audio – more than you can shake a stick at.  
        • Ardour, Audacity, 
        • Loads of custom soundcard support, including the ENVY24 utility that my old school sound card/audio interface needs
        • Guitarix, rackarack, a looper, multiple drum samplers, the list goes on
        • Multiple media players – VLC, Parole, Xjadeo
        • BONUS – KDE Connect!
  • Lubuntu Features
  • First Lubuntu LTS with LXQt
    • Who on the team has tried it? (Moss attempted to install it but couldn’t get past Calamares UEFI installer requirements for some reason)
  • Ubuntu Kylin Features
    • new Qt-based desktop environment
    • Who on the team has tried it?
  • Ubuntu Cinnamon Respin
    • Features?
    • Who on the team has tried it?
  • Ubuntu Lumina Respin
    • Based on Lumina from TrueOS
  • Overall Issues with Ubuntu 20.04
    • We have commented on the fact that this is a new LTS. Several apps did not work properly in 18.04 which worked fine in 16.04 and had to be reworked, and in this vein several users have noted a problem with Clementine music player. Any others noted?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Londoner (Telegram)
  • K Wisher (mewe)
  • x1cygnus, Scott (Telegram)
  • Dale Miracle (Telegram)
  • Dave W. (Email)
  • Larry P. (Email)

http://170.187.156.171/2020/04/29/mintcast-333-5-efired/

  • John Wallis Security Saga

CHECK THIS OUT!

Announcements: 

  • Our next episode will be at 2 pm Central US time, 7 pm UTC, May 17, 2020. That’s 8 pm 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.
]]> 4394 mintCast 331 – The Art of Tracking https://mintcast.org/mintcast-331-the-art-of-tracking/ Wed, 25 Mar 2020 05:15:53 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4303 Then, in the news, NPM gets acquired, OBS adds a number, Purism and Pinebook have new releases, Basilisk takes us back in time, and Gnome gets new features.
In security, Edge is coming, and it’s worse than we thought.
Download
]]>

Download

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

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

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

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

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

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

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

Download

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

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

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

Bi-Weekly Wanderings:

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

The News: 

Security Update: 

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

Announcements: 

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

Wrap-up:

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

  • Hobstar for his work on the new logo
  • Josh for all his work on the website
  • Hacker Public Radio for the Mumble server we are using to record
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about.
]]> 4301 mintCast 323 – Ok, Beta https://mintcast.org/mintcast-323-ok-beta/ Wed, 04 Dec 2019 06:42:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4038 Then, in our news, Linux Mint has a new update, System76 builds its own laptops, Kali goes undercover, the new 5.4 Kernel, and more!
In security, we talk D-Link remote access.
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we talk more about Linux Mint and Clem’s comments.
And finally, our listener feedback.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Working on the stream
      • With Josh schedule packed, I gave streaming a try. Back to youtube it is since the barrier to entry was so low.
      • OBS is quite the software. Currently, we’re doing a streaming simple with an image. Nothing fancy, but as I got looking into the details, you can do so much more.
      • I didn’t want to rock the boat too much, but a Telegram, Discord and IRC chat monitor would be nifty, and something I want to look into for the future if we stick with youtube.
      • I know there are people out there that want an audio-only stream. For you all, I have a fix.
    • UBPorts on a Nexus 7 2013 (Wifi)
      • This was an interesting journey. I dusted off my Nexus 7 from a few years ago, plugged it in to charge, and about 30 minutes later, was installing UBPorts using their snap installer.
      • The bootloader was unlocked years ago, so I can’t recall exactly how I did my ADB magic, but I’ve had a few OSes on it over the years.
      • I’m just getting familiar with Ubuntu Touch, but it seems promising.
    • Installed a 1080p panel on my T450s
      • Fun times. For a little under $50, I bought a 1080p replacement panel for my T450s. I had been on the 900p panel since I bought it about two years ago, and finally got fed up with it. The discoloration that comes with TN panels finally wore me down.
      • This 1080p was supposed to be an IPS Field Replacement Unit, so, same same as the OEM screen, but turned out to be a 1080p TN, or low quality VA panel, at best.
      • Still 1080p, still more room, still a huge improvement, and for the price, I’m still happy.
  • Tony H 
    • This week I’ve put Mint onto an HP G62 Laptop with a 2.1 GHz AMD Phenom II Triple-Core Processor N830. This processor came out in December 2010 so the PC is nearly 9 years old. I used it at the LUG last week and the battery life despite being at full capacity (I suspect it is a replacement of the original) is a paltory 1.5-2 Hrs or less if playing video, and it runs quite walm. The top power on the CPU is 35w, compared to modern mobile processors which can be less than half of this processor. It’s probably destined to be passed onto my local homeless charity to give someone a new start in tech.
    • Continuing to get to grips with Ubuntu 19.10, thanks to Peter Jones I now have a half usable system with the Dash to Panel installed and on the bottom of the screen and the side dock hidden from view. Feels a little more like home, but it would be great if this was a one button in a menu somewhere to set it up without having to install all these additional functions to get it to work. Apart from this, it’s a great Linux OS as you would expect from Ubuntu, I can’t say I’ve had any issues with it at all in day to day use. 
    • Also continuing to Invest (code for spending all my money) on my new hobby of restoring Matchbox models. I bought a large consignment on Ebay and got a bargain with many 50’s and 60’s models and only a few of the later 1970’s (which are still nearly 50 years old). I’ve been buying tools and preparing to buy a small modelers spray booth, as well as buying materials for paint stripping and preparing the models for repainting. Starting to appreciate the time these YouTubers put in to the hobby and all the videoing and post production it takes. 
    • As of yesterday I actually completed my first restoration a Matchbox No28 Mk10 Jaguar if any one is interested.     

 

  • Moss 
    • I sold an ASUS MeMOPad to a listener; I hadn’t even put it up for sale, but he asked what I had that was cheap and I told him. It was a turkey of a tablet; I had such high hopes for it when I bought it. I got about $12 for it and bought some groceries.
    • Zorin OS 15 has just released their Lite version, with XFCE Desktop, and they did quite a lovely job on the desktop. I put it on my Kudu 3, and I kinda like it. Yes, I am now triple-booting the Kudu – Core, Ultimate, and Lite – but it’s all Zorin.
    • During a period of digital frustration, I remembered I had a free partition on my Galago Pro 2. I eased my nerves by taking a few hours and successfully installing Sabayon. Yes, it took a while. Yes, it’s Gentoo. But it’s so sweet…
    • I made an attempt to boot my inherited Linux box. Sadly, the password was not what I expected, so I couldn’t log into what was probably an old version of Fedora, so I attempted to install Linux Mint on it. I ran into another instance of the GRUB not being written properly, and I also could not get the CD drive to boot (I could have used my Super Grub 2 disk). I had some discussion with the Telegram group of people, mostly cryptodan and Peter Jones, and got frustrated so I put the box away for a while. I promise to get back to it. The box is pretty nice, a mini ATX with 16 Gb of RAM and a 120 Gb SSD on a Gigabyte motherboard.
    • I have added some tiers and a Donation link to my Sponsus page. Now to get some sponsors and donations. 
    • I found I had opened 2 accounts at ReverbNation sometime in 2014 and promptly forgotten about both; I’ve written RN to see if they can combine the two and then see if I can put the site to some use promoting my music. I did find a recording I didn’t think I had posted anywhere on one of the accounts.
    • I just celebrated my 3rd Anniversary…and Wednesday will be my mmphthy-mmph birthday. Distrohoppers’ Digest is set to be recorded on Wednesday, and Tony should have it out by Friday.

 

  • Joe
    • Listened to an Audio Drama/podcast.  2 Seasons of Wolverine.  
    • Also listened to Piers Anthony’s Bio Of a Space Tyrant
      • Most assuredly not a book for younger readers.  Based on the topics
        • Murder 
        • Piracy
        • Incest
        • Sex with people that I would consider underage
      • I did listen to all 6 books in the series and Anthony is one of my more liked authors.
      • He also writes all his books on linux machines since about 2000
      • Well read series
      • But in the end I am not sure I would recommend to readers.
      • I didn’t dislike it but I find it hard to suggest it for others
    •  Listening to the Dresden Files again, hoping that the next one comes out soon
    •  Replaced the keyboard on that convertible laptop
      • Also removed Linux and reinstalled Windows for my daughter
      • Had to install woeusb in order to get a functioning bootable Windows 10 usb stick
      • Then gave it to my eldest daughter and she gave her laptop to her sister
      • Who ruined another charging port on another tablet, the ASUS Transformer T102HA which I will be taking apart to see if it is an easy fix because it is an awesome device
      • That is 2 T100’s and a T102 that currently have that problem.  Looks like I need to learn how to fix it and get a hot air gun.
    • Also had a problem with one of my Dell Venue 11 keyboards where not all the keys were working
      • I had a spare keyboard with a bad battery so I did a swap between the two but for some reason the touchpad would not work(at least not with the battery connected)
      • So I pulled the touchpad off and swapped that from the one with bad keys
      • Still didn’t work
      • So I swapped the cables for the touchpad.
      • Still didn’t work
      • So I swapped the connector bracket that goes from the keyboard to the tablet, thinking it would be the last time I had to take it apart
      • It wasn’t, still didn’t work
      • Finally I swapped the mainboard hoping that wasn’t what was bad on the other keyboard and it works great(most of the time)
      • Still some issues sometimes on restart but that seems to be a problem with all keyboards for this device.  Just disconnect a reconnect a couple of times and everything works
      • About 7 hours worth of work total with testing and reseating between each step to make sure I had done things correctly.  Also I could have had it done much quicker if I had realized it was the mainboard first.
      • But hey I have 2 fully functioning keyboards again and I know a lot more about how that keyboard is put together.
      • Really need the extra battery power to make it through the day.
      • But I am still thinking about getting one of the soft keyboards without batteries.
    • Picked up a travel router
      • GL.iNet GL-AR300M-EXT 
      • Works good so far.  
      • Easytether install worked like a charm.  But t-mo seems to be detecting and throttling.  May be detecting the router. More testing required. More details in the innards.
  • Tony W
    • RAM upgrade on main/living room PC (why did I not do this before?)
    • Gaming fun: Native Linux and Proton games on Steam, PCSX2 Emulator
      • Native on Linux 
        • Team Fortress 2 (my kid plays this, I watched)
        • CS GO, No Room in Hell are MPO games I still plan to try
        • Was interested in Shadow of Mordr and Tomb Raider but too expensive
      • PCSX2 Emulator
        • Fun, works well
        • Had to change a couple of the defaults for Spiderman 2 
          • Changed graphics to Software vs hardware
      • Reversed axes for controllerProton: 
        • Underpowered machine: PC is an old Lenovo with i3 4th Gen, low profile 1GB Nvidia card, 8GB of Ram
        • Batman Arkham Origins – Unplayable due to lag in Steam/Proton.  I am sure it would have been fine on a more powerful PC. It did run OK in Windows
        • GTA San Andreas – Ran great in Proton, occasional crashing when loading a saved game.  Easy enough to kill with TOP and restart. Not a bi issue for me but I see how minor glitches like this might be annoying enough to make somebody dive back to Windows to play a game
        • Consensus on Proton, definitely awesome if you have a machine that can spare the overhead

THE NEWS:

  • Linux Mint Monthly News ALL
    • “All 3 editions of Linux Mint 19.3 passed QA and we’ll be announcing the BETA release on Tuesday!”
    • Assuming that’s December 3rd.
    • New, unannounced changes to the software section, and three new apps are making their arrival.
    • System Reports will now give messages from the tray. This will give users access to workarounds, solutions  and information. This feature will also be used to announce the full release of 19.3 from within the BETA, and it’s being backported, so you’ll hear about it on 19.2 and previous as well (if you run updates on older releases)!
  • System76 will start designing and building their computers from the ground up in DenverMOSS
  • Kali Linux 2019.4 Released LEO
    • XFCE the new default desktop
    • kali-undercover changes your DE to look like Windows. Icons and all.
    • Our markdown overlords are winning. Kali’s docs are now in markdown!
    • BTRFS 
  • Kape Technologies buys PIA’s parent company (also owns ZenMate and CyberGhost VPNs – total over 2 million paying subscribers)MOSS
  • Kernel 5.4 is released Tony W LTS – last LTS was 4.19
    • Primary feature is a new kernel lockdown mode that aims to improve the separation of UID 0 (aka root) and the kernel.
    • Lots of AMD support added – 
      • Navi 12 and 14 GPUs
      • MD Arcturus graphics cards,
      • AMD Dali APU
      • AMD 2020 APU
    • Lots of added ARM support Snapdragon 855, a bunch of ARM based laptops (ASUS NovaGo, HP Envy X2 and the Lenovo Miix 630)
  • Is full Linux kernel support coming to Android? Google outlines its plans Joe
  • Librem 5 is shipping, First Impressions TONY W
    • Early adopter/developer stage
    • Some flaws that are expected to be fixed in future software updates
      • No audio in calls
      • Camera issues
      • Battery life “meh”
      • Gets really warm
      • Software generally alpha status
    • Former employees have expressed the company releases “disingenuous” updates
    • My opinions:
      • I am glad to hear the progress that some backers have the device in hand, and the early flaws don’t dampen my optimism
      • you REALLY have to believe in the Purism/Librem cause to justify $699 for this device, especially when Pinephone is coming soon at $149!!!  (300 Euros for Volla phone, *Check This Out)
  • Glimpse Released LEO
    • The 0.1.0 release is based on 2.10.12, instead of the current 2.10.14.
    • The Glimpse guys prefer Flatpak as the preferred way to install (it’s on top!)
    • Snap and AUR are in a separate community section.
    • Windows and Mac are also supported (same as GIMP)
  • US Student was building a Gentoo-based distro for ISIS MOSS

SECURITY UPDATE: 

      • D-Link ‘Won’t Fix’ even more routers
        • The flaw (CVE-2019-16920) that D-Link won’t fix allows an attacker to bypass authentication entirely to get admin access to your router. This is very, very not good. 
        • You can mitigate the issue by turning off remote management, but that doesn’t stop the attack from happening from within your network. Please do yourself a favor and move to something else.
        • Models: DIR-866, DIR-655, DHP-1565, DIR-652, DAP-1533, DGL-5500, DIR-130, DIR-330, DIR-615, DIR-825, DIR-835, DIR-855L and DIR-862.
      • Mozilla Increasing Bug Bounty Payouts
        • Doubling, for critical, core and other Mozilla sites. 
        • And, tripling for Remote Code Execution on critical sites.
        • Firefox Monitor and Private Network are added to the list of Core Sites
      • Webmin Attacked by Mr. Roboto Botnet
        • A follow-up to Episode 316.
        • The vulnerability we were talking in that episode has been weaponized
        • Mr. Roboto, the botnet, is utilizing the flaw to be able to create a reverse shell, run commands, run files within URLs, DDoS, and self-uninstall.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Next Show: Dec 15, 2019 – 2PM US Central 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 and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4038 mintCast 323 – Ok, Beta (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-323-ok-beta-mp3/ Wed, 04 Dec 2019 06:35:49 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4036 Then, in our news, Linux Mint has a new update, System76 builds its own laptops, Kali goes undercover, the new 5.4 Kernel, and more!
In security, we talk D-Link remote access.
Download
]]>

Download

First up, in our Wanderings, Leo Goes Upstream, Moss fights frustration by installing Sabayon again, Tony Hughes grapples with Gnome3, Joe fixes some keyboards, and Tony Watts plays on Proton

Then, in our news, Linux Mint has a new update, System76 builds its own laptops, Kali goes undercover, the new 5.4 Kernel, and more!

In security, we talk D-Link remote access.

BI-WEEKLY WANDERINGS:

  • Leo
    • Working on the stream
      • With Josh schedule packed, I gave streaming a try. Back to youtube it is since the barrier to entry was so low.
      • OBS is quite the software. Currently, we’re doing a streaming simple with an image. Nothing fancy, but as I got looking into the details, you can do so much more.
      • I didn’t want to rock the boat too much, but a Telegram, Discord and IRC chat monitor would be nifty, and something I want to look into for the future if we stick with youtube.
      • I know there are people out there that want an audio-only stream. For you all, I have a fix.
    • UBPorts on a Nexus 7 2013 (Wifi)
      • This was an interesting journey. I dusted off my Nexus 7 from a few years ago, plugged it in to charge, and about 30 minutes later, was installing UBPorts using their snap installer.
      • The bootloader was unlocked years ago, so I can’t recall exactly how I did my ADB magic, but I’ve had a few OSes on it over the years.
      • I’m just getting familiar with Ubuntu Touch, but it seems promising.
    • Installed a 1080p panel on my T450s
      • Fun times. For a little under $50, I bought a 1080p replacement panel for my T450s. I had been on the 900p panel since I bought it about two years ago, and finally got fed up with it. The discoloration that comes with TN panels finally wore me down.
      • This 1080p was supposed to be an IPS Field Replacement Unit, so, same same as the OEM screen, but turned out to be a 1080p TN, or low quality VA panel, at best.
      • Still 1080p, still more room, still a huge improvement, and for the price, I’m still happy.
  • Tony H 
    • This week I’ve put Mint onto an HP G62 Laptop with a 2.1 GHz AMD Phenom II Triple-Core Processor N830. This processor came out in December 2010 so the PC is nearly 9 years old. I used it at the LUG last week and the battery life despite being at full capacity (I suspect it is a replacement of the original) is a paltory 1.5-2 Hrs or less if playing video, and it runs quite walm. The top power on the CPU is 35w, compared to modern mobile processors which can be less than half of this processor. It’s probably destined to be passed onto my local homeless charity to give someone a new start in tech.
    • Continuing to get to grips with Ubuntu 19.10, thanks to Peter Jones I now have a half usable system with the Dash to Panel installed and on the bottom of the screen and the side dock hidden from view. Feels a little more like home, but it would be great if this was a one button in a menu somewhere to set it up without having to install all these additional functions to get it to work. Apart from this, it’s a great Linux OS as you would expect from Ubuntu, I can’t say I’ve had any issues with it at all in day to day use. 
    • Also continuing to Invest (code for spending all my money) on my new hobby of restoring Matchbox models. I bought a large consignment on Ebay and got a bargain with many 50’s and 60’s models and only a few of the later 1970’s (which are still nearly 50 years old). I’ve been buying tools and preparing to buy a small modelers spray booth, as well as buying materials for paint stripping and preparing the models for repainting. Starting to appreciate the time these YouTubers put in to the hobby and all the videoing and post production it takes. 
    • As of yesterday I actually completed my first restoration a Matchbox No28 Mk10 Jaguar if any one is interested.     

 

  • Moss 
    • I sold an ASUS MeMOPad to a listener; I hadn’t even put it up for sale, but he asked what I had that was cheap and I told him. It was a turkey of a tablet; I had such high hopes for it when I bought it. I got about $12 for it and bought some groceries.
    • Zorin OS 15 has just released their Lite version, with XFCE Desktop, and they did quite a lovely job on the desktop. I put it on my Kudu 3, and I kinda like it. Yes, I am now triple-booting the Kudu – Core, Ultimate, and Lite – but it’s all Zorin.
    • During a period of digital frustration, I remembered I had a free partition on my Galago Pro 2. I eased my nerves by taking a few hours and successfully installing Sabayon. Yes, it took a while. Yes, it’s Gentoo. But it’s so sweet…
    • I made an attempt to boot my inherited Linux box. Sadly, the password was not what I expected, so I couldn’t log into what was probably an old version of Fedora, so I attempted to install Linux Mint on it. I ran into another instance of the GRUB not being written properly, and I also could not get the CD drive to boot (I could have used my Super Grub 2 disk). I had some discussion with the Telegram group of people, mostly cryptodan and Peter Jones, and got frustrated so I put the box away for a while. I promise to get back to it. The box is pretty nice, a mini ATX with 16 Gb of RAM and a 120 Gb SSD on a Gigabyte motherboard.
    • I have added some tiers and a Donation link to my Sponsus page. Now to get some sponsors and donations. 
    • I found I had opened 2 accounts at ReverbNation sometime in 2014 and promptly forgotten about both; I’ve written RN to see if they can combine the two and then see if I can put the site to some use promoting my music. I did find a recording I didn’t think I had posted anywhere on one of the accounts.
    • I just celebrated my 3rd Anniversary…and Wednesday will be my mmphthy-mmph birthday. Distrohoppers’ Digest is set to be recorded on Wednesday, and Tony should have it out by Friday.

 

  • Joe
    • Listened to an Audio Drama/podcast.  2 Seasons of Wolverine.  
    • Also listened to Piers Anthony’s Bio Of a Space Tyrant
      • Most assuredly not a book for younger readers.  Based on the topics
        • Murder 
        • Piracy
        • Incest
        • Sex with people that I would consider underage
      • I did listen to all 6 books in the series and Anthony is one of my more liked authors.
      • He also writes all his books on linux machines since about 2000
      • Well read series
      • But in the end I am not sure I would recommend to readers.
      • I didn’t dislike it but I find it hard to suggest it for others
    •  Listening to the Dresden Files again, hoping that the next one comes out soon
    •  Replaced the keyboard on that convertible laptop
      • Also removed Linux and reinstalled Windows for my daughter
      • Had to install woeusb in order to get a functioning bootable Windows 10 usb stick
      • Then gave it to my eldest daughter and she gave her laptop to her sister
      • Who ruined another charging port on another tablet, the ASUS Transformer T102HA which I will be taking apart to see if it is an easy fix because it is an awesome device
      • That is 2 T100’s and a T102 that currently have that problem.  Looks like I need to learn how to fix it and get a hot air gun.
    • Also had a problem with one of my Dell Venue 11 keyboards where not all the keys were working
      • I had a spare keyboard with a bad battery so I did a swap between the two but for some reason the touchpad would not work(at least not with the battery connected)
      • So I pulled the touchpad off and swapped that from the one with bad keys
      • Still didn’t work
      • So I swapped the cables for the touchpad.
      • Still didn’t work
      • So I swapped the connector bracket that goes from the keyboard to the tablet, thinking it would be the last time I had to take it apart
      • It wasn’t, still didn’t work
      • Finally I swapped the mainboard hoping that wasn’t what was bad on the other keyboard and it works great(most of the time)
      • Still some issues sometimes on restart but that seems to be a problem with all keyboards for this device.  Just disconnect a reconnect a couple of times and everything works
      • About 7 hours worth of work total with testing and reseating between each step to make sure I had done things correctly.  Also I could have had it done much quicker if I had realized it was the mainboard first.
      • But hey I have 2 fully functioning keyboards again and I know a lot more about how that keyboard is put together.
      • Really need the extra battery power to make it through the day.
      • But I am still thinking about getting one of the soft keyboards without batteries.
    • Picked up a travel router
      • GL.iNet GL-AR300M-EXT 
      • Works good so far.  
      • Easytether install worked like a charm.  But t-mo seems to be detecting and throttling.  May be detecting the router. More testing required. More details in the innards.
  • Tony W
    • RAM upgrade on main/living room PC (why did I not do this before?)
    • Gaming fun: Native Linux and Proton games on Steam, PCSX2 Emulator
      • Native on Linux 
        • Team Fortress 2 (my kid plays this, I watched)
        • CS GO, No Room in Hell are MPO games I still plan to try
        • Was interested in Shadow of Mordr and Tomb Raider but too expensive
      • PCSX2 Emulator
        • Fun, works well
        • Had to change a couple of the defaults for Spiderman 2 
          • Changed graphics to Software vs hardware
      • Reversed axes for controllerProton: 
        • Underpowered machine: PC is an old Lenovo with i3 4th Gen, low profile 1GB Nvidia card, 8GB of Ram
        • Batman Arkham Origins – Unplayable due to lag in Steam/Proton.  I am sure it would have been fine on a more powerful PC. It did run OK in Windows
        • GTA San Andreas – Ran great in Proton, occasional crashing when loading a saved game.  Easy enough to kill with TOP and restart. Not a bi issue for me but I see how minor glitches like this might be annoying enough to make somebody dive back to Windows to play a game
        • Consensus on Proton, definitely awesome if you have a machine that can spare the overhead

THE NEWS:

  • Linux Mint Monthly News ALL
    • “All 3 editions of Linux Mint 19.3 passed QA and we’ll be announcing the BETA release on Tuesday!”
    • Assuming that’s December 3rd.
    • New, unannounced changes to the software section, and three new apps are making their arrival.
    • System Reports will now give messages from the tray. This will give users access to workarounds, solutions  and information. This feature will also be used to announce the full release of 19.3 from within the BETA, and it’s being backported, so you’ll hear about it on 19.2 and previous as well (if you run updates on older releases)!
  • System76 will start designing and building their computers from the ground up in DenverMOSS
  • Kali Linux 2019.4 Released LEO
    • XFCE the new default desktop
    • kali-undercover changes your DE to look like Windows. Icons and all.
    • Our markdown overlords are winning. Kali’s docs are now in markdown!
    • BTRFS 
  • Kape Technologies buys PIA’s parent company (also owns ZenMate and CyberGhost VPNs – total over 2 million paying subscribers)MOSS
  • Kernel 5.4 is released Tony W LTS – last LTS was 4.19
    • Primary feature is a new kernel lockdown mode that aims to improve the separation of UID 0 (aka root) and the kernel.
    • Lots of AMD support added – 
      • Navi 12 and 14 GPUs
      • MD Arcturus graphics cards,
      • AMD Dali APU
      • AMD 2020 APU
    • Lots of added ARM support Snapdragon 855, a bunch of ARM based laptops (ASUS NovaGo, HP Envy X2 and the Lenovo Miix 630)
  • Is full Linux kernel support coming to Android? Google outlines its plans Joe
  • Librem 5 is shipping, First Impressions TONY W
    • Early adopter/developer stage
    • Some flaws that are expected to be fixed in future software updates
      • No audio in calls
      • Camera issues
      • Battery life “meh”
      • Gets really warm
      • Software generally alpha status
    • Former employees have expressed the company releases “disingenuous” updates
    • My opinions:
      • I am glad to hear the progress that some backers have the device in hand, and the early flaws don’t dampen my optimism
      • you REALLY have to believe in the Purism/Librem cause to justify $699 for this device, especially when Pinephone is coming soon at $149!!!  (300 Euros for Volla phone, *Check This Out)
  • Glimpse Released LEO
    • The 0.1.0 release is based on 2.10.12, instead of the current 2.10.14.
    • The Glimpse guys prefer Flatpak as the preferred way to install (it’s on top!)
    • Snap and AUR are in a separate community section.
    • Windows and Mac are also supported (same as GIMP)
  • US Student was building a Gentoo-based distro for ISIS MOSS

SECURITY UPDATE: 

      • D-Link ‘Won’t Fix’ even more routers
        • The flaw (CVE-2019-16920) that D-Link won’t fix allows an attacker to bypass authentication entirely to get admin access to your router. This is very, very not good. 
        • You can mitigate the issue by turning off remote management, but that doesn’t stop the attack from happening from within your network. Please do yourself a favor and move to something else.
        • Models: DIR-866, DIR-655, DHP-1565, DIR-652, DAP-1533, DGL-5500, DIR-130, DIR-330, DIR-615, DIR-825, DIR-835, DIR-855L and DIR-862.
      • Mozilla Increasing Bug Bounty Payouts
        • Doubling, for critical, core and other Mozilla sites. 
        • And, tripling for Remote Code Execution on critical sites.
        • Firefox Monitor and Private Network are added to the list of Core Sites
      • Webmin Attacked by Mr. Roboto Botnet
        • A follow-up to Episode 316.
        • The vulnerability we were talking in that episode has been weaponized
        • Mr. Roboto, the botnet, is utilizing the flaw to be able to create a reverse shell, run commands, run files within URLs, DDoS, and self-uninstall.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Next Show: Dec 15, 2019 – 2PM US Central 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 and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4036 mintCast 321.5 – Wololo https://mintcast.org/mintcast-321-5-wololo/ Wed, 13 Nov 2019 06:55:39 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4008 And finally, our community feedback.
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we decide when it’s the right time to suggest switching to Linux.

And finally, our community feedback.

LINUX INNARDS:

  • Intro
  • When NOT to recommend
    • Dependence on proprietary software
      • Audio/video production, but depends on the need. Some FOSS applications are very good at the basics
    • Too resistant to change
    • Not receptive to idea of free software being quality – assume free = low quality and not professional or dependable
    • When they have unsupported hardware
  • When to recommend
    • Mostly just uses their computer for Internet and email
    • Already uses some open source software, Open/LibreOffice, Firefox, VLC, GIMP/Glimpse etc.
    • Have unsupported Win version (Vista, etc) on old hardware
    • Interested in new stuff
    • Wants to learn to program
  • Put Linux on in a dual boot
    • “Just in case” second OS for someone who will primarily use Windows/Mac
      • Grub Customizer to move Linux to 2nd boot option in this scenario
    • Linux first, retain Windows/Mac “just in case”
  • Distro to use
    • Mint, obviously
    • Fedora if they want to get into computer administration or IT
    • MX for older machines or dislike of systemd {which other light 32-bit distros?}
    • Deepin or Pearl Desktop 8 for super pretty desktops (both of these may be contraindicated for political reasons)
    • Don’t be afraid to recommend buying used hardware when the user really needs it. T430s and X220s are cheap and will be good for another 5+ years. Any intel first gen i3/5 or AMD equivalent (6), is more than adequate for low resource case usage.
    • Anything else, for different use cases?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Henrik Hemerin

https://www.hemrin.com/business-blog/201-linux-mint-just-works-but-not-this-time .

 

 

  • George From Tulsa

Cinnamon Spices: https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/

  • John

www.apneaboard.com

  • Peter Jones
  • Brad Alexander

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=basil+sands&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

  • Bill Dietrich

https://www.billdietrich.me/MovingToLinux.html?expandall=1#LinuxIssues

  • Lucille Piche <pournew@gmail.com>

CHECK THIS OUT!

  • Moss – new find, FossPost – they also have a Telegram (announcements only) called OpenPigeon

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Next Show: Nov 17, 2019 – 2PM central 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 and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4008 mintCast 321.5 – Wololo (mp3) https://mintcast.org/mintcast-321-5-wololo-mp3/ Wed, 13 Nov 2019 06:55:12 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=4006 And finally, our community feedback.
Download
]]>

Download

In our Innards section, we decide when it’s the right time to suggest switching to Linux.

And finally, our community feedback.

LINUX INNARDS: 

  • Intro
  • When NOT to recommend
    • Dependence on proprietary software
      • Audio/video production, but depends on the need.  Some FOSS applications are very good at the basics
    • Too resistant to change
    • Not receptive to idea of free software being quality – assume free = low quality and not professional or dependable
    • When they have unsupported hardware
  • When to recommend
    • Mostly just uses their computer for Internet and email
    • Already uses some open source software, Open/LibreOffice, Firefox, VLC, GIMP/Glimpse etc.
    • Have unsupported Win version (Vista, etc) on old hardware
    • Interested in new stuff
    • Wants to learn to program
  • Put Linux on in a dual boot
    • “Just in case” second OS for someone who will primarily use Windows/Mac
      • Grub Customizer to move Linux to 2nd boot option in this scenario
    • Linux first, retain Windows/Mac “just in case”
  • Distro to use
    • Mint, obviously
    • Fedora if they want to get into computer administration or IT
    • MX for older machines or dislike of systemd {which other light 32-bit distros?}
    • Deepin or Pearl Desktop 8 for super pretty desktops (both of these may be contraindicated for political reasons)
    • Don’t be afraid to recommend buying used hardware when the user really needs it. T430s and X220s are cheap and will be good for another 5+ years. Any intel first gen i3/5 or AMD equivalent (6), is more than adequate for low resource case usage.
    • Anything else, for different use cases?

VIBRATIONS FROM THE ETHER:

  • Henrik Hemerin

https://www.hemrin.com/business-blog/201-linux-mint-just-works-but-not-this-time .

 

 

  • George From Tulsa

Cinnamon Spices: https://cinnamon-spices.linuxmint.com/

  • John

www.apneaboard.com

  • Peter Jones
  • Brad Alexander

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=basil+sands&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

  • Bill Dietrich

https://www.billdietrich.me/MovingToLinux.html?expandall=1#LinuxIssues

  • Lucille Piche <pournew@gmail.com>

CHECK THIS OUT! 

  • Moss – new find, FossPost – they also have a Telegram (announcements only) called OpenPigeon

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Next Show: Nov 17, 2019 – 2PM central 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 and the livestream (We’ve had over 60 listeners today on the backup mixer platform and brought on some new listeners who’ve never heard of the podcast)
  • Bytemark Hosting for hosting mintcast.org and our Mumble server
  • Archive.org for hosting our audio files
  • The Linux Mint development team for the fine distro we love to talk about <Thanks, Clem!>
]]> 4006 mintCast 278 – Talking about GCC https://mintcast.org/mintcast-278-talking-aboug-gcc/ Tue, 19 Dec 2017 02:43:55 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3327 278]

Download

Bi-weekly Wanderings:

  • Isaac sets up his OnionPi and hates his cell phone.
  • Rob was busy with family and church, but did manage to switch cell phone providers from Ting to T-Mobile.

News:

Linux Innards:

Vibrations from the Ether:

  • Thanks to everyone that emailed us or left comments on the webpage.
  • Contribute to archive.org!

Check this out!:

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

  • Send us your bumper or intro or outro music.
  • Next time we’ll be discussing last year’s and new year’s predictions.
  • Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone….we’ll be back in 3 weeks!

More Information:

Hosts: Rob and Isaac
Live Stream every other Monday 6:00 p.m.(Central): mintcast.org/livestream

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

]]> 3327 mintCast 278 (MP3) – Talking about GCC https://mintcast.org/mintcast-278-mp3-talking-about-gcc/ Tue, 19 Dec 2017 02:26:15 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=3325 278]

Download

]]> 3325 mintCast 230 – Linux Mint 17.2 KDE & Xfce https://mintcast.org/mintcast-230-linux-mint-17-2-kde-xfce/ Fri, 14 Aug 2015 01:50:41 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2996 230]

Download

Introduction:

News:

Main Topic: Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela – KDE & Xfce

Website:

Tip:

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

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

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

]]> 2996 mintCast 216 – Linux Mint 17.1 KDE and Xfce https://mintcast.org/mintcast-216-linux-mint-17-1-kde-and-xfce/ Fri, 16 Jan 2015 02:32:42 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2921 216] Download

News:

Linux Mint 17.1 KDE and Xfce Editions

Website:

Tip:

  • sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata – you can use this command to quickly change your timezone.  It runs an ncurses based utility that harkens back to the days of text based Linux installers.

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

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

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

]]> 2921 mintCast 204 – Mint 17 KDE & Xfce https://mintcast.org/mintcast-204-mint-17-kde-xfce/ Thu, 03 Jul 2014 20:07:52 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2842 204] Download

News:

  • Qiana ‘v2’ ISO respins issued by Mint team (linuxmint.com)
  • Is the KDE desktop stagnant? Jack Wallen thinks so (techrepublic.com)
  • Where is the KDE desktop going? (dot.kde.org)
  • Intuit beats a patent troll in a case that could have farther reaching consequences (arstechnica.com)
  • The latest top 500 super-computer list is out and Linux dominates (linux.com)
  • Don’t forget to download your UbuntuOne files before July 31st (softpedia.com)

Main Topic: Mint 17 KDE & Xfce

  • Mint 17 KDE (KDE)
  • Mint 17 Xfce (Xfce)

Website:

Tip:

Pre-Show Music:

Podcast Announcements:

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, Joe
Live Stream every other Monday 7:00 p.m. or Sunday 2:00 p.m.(Central): mintcast.org/livestream

Contact Us:

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

Credits:

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

]]> 2842 mintCast 188 – Mint 16 KDE and Xfce https://mintcast.org/mintcast-188-mint-16-kde-and-xfce/ Fri, 10 Jan 2014 03:51:44 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2737 188] Download

PreShow Music:

News:

  • Petra backports available in Linux Mint 13 – The most significant improvements in Petra are being backported to Maya. Among other things, this gives Linux Mint 13 LTS users access to the following packages: MDM 1.4, Cinnamon 2.0, MATE 1.6, The latest versions of mintwelcome, mintstick, mintnanny, mintupload, mintupdate, mintinstall, mintsystem, mintmenu and mintdesktop. (blog.linuxmint.com)
  • Cinnamon: graphics tablet support needs testing – We’ve begun re-porting graphics tablet (wacom) support back into Cinnamon. (segfault.linuxmint.com)
  • Linux Wins the Desktop in 2014 and 3 More Bold Predictions – Linux won, the penguin has achieved world domination, and the usual commentarians completely missed it even after years of predicting it. (linux.com)
  • Why didn’t Linux win on the desktop? – Heady forecasts showing Linux would become a major player on the desktop. While the prognostications proved correct for server and embedded operating systems, what happened on the desktop? (zdnet.com)
  • Valve Already Has A Dozen Steam Machine Partners – Valve has announced their first 12 partners that intend to bring Steam Machines to the marketplace this year. (phoronix.com)
  • GNU Octave 3.8 With Its GUI Officially Announced – GNU Octave 3.8 was officially released on 31 December 2013 to close out the year. Octave 3.8 has its own graphical user-interface and uses OpenGL in conjunction with FLTK widgets. (phoronix.com)
  • Panasonic will bring Firefox OS to your smart TV this year – Firefox OS won’t be confined to small devices for much longer. Panasonic has announced a partnership with Mozilla that will see it launch Firefox OS-powered smart TVs and other “smart screens.” (engadget.com)

Main Topic:

Podcast Announcements:

  • Jonathan Nadeau has launched an indiegogo campaign to help bring digital sight to the vision impaired. Further developing the Orca screen reader for vision impaired users to access a computer. (www.igg.me/at/orca)
  • Linux in the Hamshack (lhspodcast.info) has also kicked off an indigogo campaign to cover some of the costs of participating in the Dayton Hamvention this year. Through a bi-weekly audio podcast, live streaming Internet radio show, community event sponsorship and general outreach, Linux in the Ham Shack (LHS) exposes users to Free Software, and amateur radio to everyone. (igg.me/at/lhs2014)

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, Joe
Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org/livestream
Contact Us:

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

Credits:
Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast bumpers were provided by Oscar.

]]> 2737 mintCast 182 – Ubuntu 13.10 https://mintcast.org/mintcast-182-ubuntu/ Fri, 08 Nov 2013 03:06:49 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2700 182] Download

News:

  • The Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, is a non-profit that has taken to the courts to fight the good fight in the digital world since 1990.  They’ve initiated legal challenges against the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping.  (talkers.com) (eff.org/)
  • Patent war goes nuclear: Microsoft, Apple-owned “Rockstar” sues Google – Canada-based telecom Nortel went bankrupt in 2009 and sold its biggest asset—a portfolio of more than 6,000 patents covering 4G wireless innovations and a range of technologies—at an auction in 2011. (arstechnica.com)
  • Can Open Source developers fix HealthCare.Gov? As computer experts hired by the U.S. government scramble to fix the much-maligned healthcare.gov website, a corps of independent kibitzers is chiming in from around the world, publicizing coding flaws that they’ve discovered and offering suggestions for fixing them. “It’s not the worst code I’ve ever seen.” (nbcnews.com)
  • Fedora 20 beta delayed yet again – The release of Fedora 20 has been delayed by another week — both the due-out beta and the final release — over unresolved bugs. (phoronix.com)
  • But it will have some cool features when it finally comes out – The latest edition of Fedora Linux, the open source operating system that helps form the basis for Red Hat’s (RHT) enterprise server platform, is set to debut soon — though a couple weeks later than initially planned, as bugs have held up the release. Still, it could bring some of this autumn’s biggest changes in desktop Linux when it appears in December. (thevarguy.com)
  • The Seattle Times goes hands-on with a Valve Steam Machine prototype – “It’s an audacious effort to convince the vast and established PC industry that there’s another path to the living room besides the one blazed by Microsoft and Intel.”(seattletimes.com)

Main Topic: Xubuntu and Ubuntu 13.10

  • Ubuntu 13.10 (ubuntu.com) will be supported for 9 months and includes cutting-edge new features that make your music, videos, documents and apps much easier to access.
  • Xubuntu (xubuntu.org) is an officially recognised flavor of the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Xubuntu comes with Xfce, which is a stable, light and configurable desktop environment.

Websites:

Tips:

  • How to Set Up Secure Remote Networking with OpenVPN on Linux (Part 1) (Part 2)

Podcast Announcements:

  • Watch for “Event” announcements in the mintCast Community on Google+ to find out when we’re recording!
  • Texas Linux Fest 2014 has been scheduled. We are going to be at the Austin Convention Center June 13th and 14th! This year we are planning to do two full days of expo floor in a much larger venue! We are already accepting registration for this year’s event! We are also starting the call for papers immediately to get as many exciting talks as we can! If you would like to submit a talk, please check here for more info: http://texaslinuxfest.org.

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, Joe
Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org
Contact Us:

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

Credits:
Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast bumpers were provided by Oscar.

]]> 2700 mintCast 181 – Manjaro… Mint for Arch? https://mintcast.org/mintcast-181-manjaro/ Fri, 01 Nov 2013 02:30:01 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2695 181] Download

News:

  • SteamOS could really help desktop Linux adoption, says Torvalds – Valve’s Steam efforts could be a big opportunity to drive desktop Linux because it could force the various desktop Linux distributions to standardize their technology. (pcworld.com)
  • Closing Doors – Posted on October 24, 2013 – “It is with a heavy heart that I must announce the closure of SolusOS. Simply put, there is no longer enough manpower to fulfill the vision. What began as a Debian derivative evolved into an independent distribution, without the large development team required to back such an effort.”
    (networkworld.com) (fossforce.com) (solusos.com – dead link?)
  • First Tizen tablets ship to developers – As originally reported, the tablet features a 1.4GHz, quad-core Cortex-A9 processor along with 2GB of DDR3 RAM, 32GB of flash, and a microSD slot. The 10.1-inch display offers 1920 x 1200-pixel resolution, and there’s both a 2-megapixel rear-facing camera, as well as a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera. Bluetooth 3.0 and WiFi round out the mix. (linuxgizmos.com)
  • LG unveils the Fireweb, its first Firefox OS smartphone – LG is expanding the platform’s reach today by releasing its inaugural Mozilla-powered handset, the Fireweb.  (engadget.com)

Main Topic: Manjaro Linux

  • Manjaro Linux (http://manjaro.org) is a user-friendly Linux distribution based on the independently developed Arch operating system. Developed in Austria, France, and Germany, Manjaro provides all the benefits of the Arch operating system combined with a focus on user-friendliness and accessibility.
  • We looked at Manjaro 0.8.7 “Ascella” Xfce i686 Edition.

Website:

Podcast Announcements:

  • Watch for “Event” announcements in the mintCast Community on Google+ to find out when we’re recording!

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, Joe
Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org
Contact Us:

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

Credits:
Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast bumpers were provided by Oscar.

]]> 2695 mintCast 172 – Lightweight Linux Desktops https://mintcast.org/mintcast-172-lightweight-linux-desktops/ Fri, 23 Aug 2013 02:13:46 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2627 172] Download

News:

The Main Topic: Lightweight Linux Desktops

Websites:

Tip:

Podcast Announcements:

  • Watch for “Event” announcements in the mintCast Community on Google+ to find out when we’re recording!

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott
Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org
Contact Us:

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

Credits:
Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast bumpers were provided by Oscar.

]]> 2627 mintCast 168 – Mint 15 Xfce and KDE https://mintcast.org/mintcast-168-mint-15-xfce-and-kde/ Fri, 26 Jul 2013 02:20:09 +0000 http://mintcast.org/?p=2595 168] Download

News:

The Main Topic: Mint 15 Xfce & Mint 15 KDE

Tip & Website in one:

  • Conky Manager is a graphical front-end for managing Conky config files. It provides options to start/stop, browse and edit Conky themes installed on the system. Packages are currently available in Launchpad for Ubuntu and derivatives. (teejeetech.blogspot.com)

Podcast Announcements:

  • Remember that Reglue is holding an indiegogo fundraiser to secure funding for operations for the coming year. You can help out by making any donation you can afford. (indiegogo.com)

More Information:

Hosts: Rob, Scott, James
Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org
Contact Us:

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

Credits:
Podcast Entry and exit music provided by Mark Blasco (podcastthemes.com). The podcast bumpers were provided by Oscar.

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