This is the full transcription of podcast 'Going Linux' - Going Linux #371 · Listener Feedback.
#Podcast #Transcription #ReadAlong #KnowledgeUnlocked
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This is the full transcription of podcast 'Going Linux' - Going Linux #371 · Listener Feedback.
#Podcast #Transcription #ReadAlong #KnowledgeUnlocked
Going Linux episode 371, listener feedback. Welcome to the Going Linux podcast. I'm your host Larry Bushey. And I'm your co-host Bill. Whether you're new to Linux, upgrading from Windows to Linux, or just thinking about moving to Linux, this podcast will provide you valuable information and advice that will help you in going Linux. We hope that you'll find this and all of our episodes helpful in learning about Linux and open source applications and using them to get things done. If you want you can send us feedback at our email address at goingis.gmail.com or leave us voicemail at 1-904-468-7889. In today's episode, listener feedback. Hello Bill. Hello Larry. It is, wasn't it yesterday the first day of summer? I don't know. It's possible. It's sometime in June, so yeah. That's all right. We have summer-like weather here in California. How about there in New Mexico? Yeah, during the day it's really nice, but this morning I actually had to put on a light jacket because it was 56 degrees. (1/54)
Okay, little chilly. But that's all right, because it'll be hot soon enough. It will. It's been around 80s, low 90s, so yeah. It's starting to finally warm up. We've had a pretty mild spring, so I'm looking forward to seeing what it is. We had a cold winter, so yeah, okay. Enough of the weather forecasts. Okay, let's talk about distro-hopping. What are you using now? Oh, I've been using them for about a week now. I just went back to 1804 Ubuntu. I changed to put the bar at the bottom, put a dalto hide, and I just put on my icons. I use it all the time. Very Deepin-esque, Mac-ish, but it works well. Everything I use frequently, I don't have to search for. I just click and it works. It's been rocks day, as Ubuntu always is on the LTSs. Yeah, so I'm pretty happy with it right now, I'm sure. The way things turn around. We'll see how long I can stay on this one. I'm getting tired of keep reinstalling and updating my game I play. I've got a copy of it, so I could just blast it back. Of (2/54)
course, you can customize your interface and everything on the game. I have to redo that all the time. I'm getting really good at it, but it's getting old. I think I'll just stay with this one for a while. I've heard that before, Bill. Hey, hey, hey. There's always that possibility. Yes. I can imagine you sitting there going, I want to reinstall, but I don't want to reinstall. I want to reinstall. I don't want to reinstall. Yeah, that's pretty much where I see the next shiny thing. It's like, ooh, butterfly. That's an inside joke. My dog is fascinated with butterflies. We have a bunch of them, so when he goes out to do his morning ritual, it's chase butterflies for 30 solid minutes. The great white furry hunter never quite catches anything. It's entertaining to watch. He's jumping around. If you didn't know any better, you'd think, why is this dog just jumping in the air? He's trying to catch the butterflies, which are just a little crooked than he is. All right, so we've done the (3/54)
Weather Channel, we've done Distro Hopping, and we've done Animal Planet. Well, actually, that's the bear report. The bear report. Okay, good. Sounds good. All right, so why don't we get into our emails, because that's what people are tuning in to listen to. Well, actually, I think they're just wanting the comic relief of hearing a big grown dog jumping around trying to catch a butterfly unsuccessfully. Well, that may be true. That may be true. And if so, you've had your update for today. Yeah, and I just want to point out, no butterflies were hurt in production to this podcast, so there, PETA won't yell at us. All right, sounds good. So now we've got some PETA disclaimer out of the way. So anyway, our first email comes from Greg, who wrote about GNU Linux distribution's timeline. He writes, Hi guys, being a Linux fanboy, I wanted to share with you if you didn't already know about it. There are several versions out there, but this one seems to be the most current. It would make a great (4/54)
wall decoration, and he lists the link from Wicca Media. Okay, so we'll include that link in the show notes. One error I noticed that I'm pretty sure about, it shows crunch bang as being a derivative of Ubuntu. I'm fairly certain it came straight from Debian, as Brunson Labs does now, when the crunch bang developer decided to call it quits, a new group of people who didn't want to see it die took up under the name Brunson Labs. Or is it Brunson or Bunson? Probably Bunson. I think it's Bunson, yeah. Yeah, so I probably misspelled it. So it's Bunson Labs. There are sure a lot of distributions, hundreds and maybe more that have come and gone over the years. You know Larry, I think, if I remember, because I've written crunch bang, and when I was writing it, it was based on Debian, but I believe he might have used Debian maybe for one version of it before switching over to the Debian base, I'm not sure. I don't know, maybe I'm thinking of something else, but I'm almost sure. He started with (5/54)
Ubuntu? There was one version that was using Ubuntu, and then he switched over to Debian base, and it was like that until he quit. I'm not quite sure. I'm 43% sure that that's the case, but not 100%. And he writes, regards Greg, w8fkj. Okay. So what do you think? Do you remember? Do you think it was always on the web? Debbie, I know you didn't run it. I did for a while. Do you remember? I don't know for sure, and I'm just wondering if distrowatch could tell us anything about it. So I'm going to go over to distrowatch and look for crunchbang. Let me see, where's the search button? There it is. Distronate. Crunchbang. And crunchbang Linux going down based on Debian stable. Origin UK, open box desktop, status is discontinued, version 8.10. It doesn't really tell me in the table where it came from. So at least distrowatch has it as a Debian derivative. I don't know. Maybe you are thinking of something else. I was thinking it was based on Ubuntu originally, but who knows? Yeah, but it was, (6/54)
when at the time I used it, I loved it. I think even Tom tried it out. It was a little too bare bones for him. But yeah, it was a nice distribution and I heard Bunsen Labs is nice. I've looked at it in a virtual box. I haven't really tinkered with it because I guess I like a little more gooey. Yeah, open box is a little spartan. But they do have that cool conky that gives you all this stuff that actually looks like it's built into desktop. So it's really cool. I think a lot of that, I mean, I know some people still use it, but I remember for a while, it was how wild could you make your conky with all the different themes and circles. It was pretty cool. It was a lot of fun. It was a great distribution from all reports I've heard. So, yeah, I guess we didn't really answer his question, but there you go. But thanks a lot for the distribution timeline chart. I've seen different versions of that. And it's one of those that if you try to print it out full size, it'll take up a whole wall. (7/54)
So it's great. It can be that big depending. You either print it really big so you can read it or you just leave it on the screen and zoom in because it's so much stuff in it. So where does it show before even looking at it real close? I took a quick peek at it. I bet you that you have a lot of it coming from a Debian because, you know, a bunch of space on Debian and all that and all the derivatives of Debian. But I wonder if Fedora has that same type of, you know, tree of different distros and stuff. I know you got Red Hat, you've got Fedora. There was Fedora Core that went to now it's just, I think, just Fedora. I mean, that's a lot of different. I mean, it's amazing. And then you've got the Gen 2 project and then you've got Slack. And it's just wild where all this, you know, how quickly they branch out. I guess Ubuntu would be probably the biggest one. Not Ubuntu, Debian. Yeah, Debian is definitely the biggest one. It's right at the top of the chart and it's got a lot. You know, (8/54)
it's a lot. Anyway, Slackware is the one that is the earliest, of course, starting back in 92 or something. Yeah. And then there are a couple of others that kind of faded out that started in around that same time, something called MCC Interim and then TAMU and then DLD and several others. But Red Hat is pretty big as well. Oh, is it? I figured it would be. As you can imagine, sure. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. So Red Hat and something branched off of Red Hat right away and it was called WGS Linux Pro. And it faded out in around, what's the year on this one, 96. So it didn't last for very long. Wow. But everything else kind of forks off from Red Hat and goes into all kinds of things. By the time you get to the right hand side of this, there are hundreds, if not thousands of them. You know, I was listening to the Ubuntu podcast this past week and they were talking about, what was it, and Tegros is closing down shop. And then we had Scientific Linux, who I guess they're just going to go over (9/54)
to the Scent OS base. And they were saying this kind of just brings up, by looking at this tree, kind of brings up that maybe you should, if you want the stability and long term support for Ubuntu, your flavor, you should stay closer to the base that, you know, like you got Debbie and then you got Ubuntu. And then Ubuntu has all the flavors of Ubuntu, Mate, Stock Ubuntu. You have a load of Ubuntu and Subuntu. And they were kind of saying that, say, they take Ubuntu Mate and they just re-theme it. And then they say, here's the new distro. And then they go for a few years and then they just kind of fade out when you could just stay with the Mate and it's still going strong. So I guess they were kind of recommending staying closer to the core. What do you think about that? I mean, I know this is kind of a little tangent, but seeing that brought that conversation back, do you think that it's a good thing? Or should we embrace having all these new distributions? Sometimes it's just changing (10/54)
a little thing and then it's, they call it a whole new distribution when really they haven't really done anything different. Yeah. So my opinion is kind of in alignment with the folks on the Ubuntu podcast. And I listen to that one as well. And I'm kind of of the mind that, you know, just because you can start a new Linux distribution and fork off from something else doesn't mean you should. I kind of agree with, I think it was Martin who was saying that if you have some specific thing that you want to do with your Linux distribution, and it's kind of a specialty distribution specifically for that thing, like scientific Linux was for the scientific market. And Ubuntu Studio is for recording and video and the creative side of things, then there's probably a reason to go off and create your own distribution. But creating a Linux distribution is a lot of work. And if you aren't prepared to see it through, you're going to end up with a Linux distribution that fades out. And those few (11/54)
people who are left holding the bag using your distribution you created have a choice to make, either switch to something else or fork it themselves and continue on. And, you know, if it's one of those that really is just another copy of Ubuntu with different wallpaper or different icons, then why? You know, why are you doing that? People can do that themselves. And if you're doing it just because, you know, you want to and you want to learn, that's OK. And nobody's going to stop you because that's what open source is about. He actually suggested if you want something like that, you should add your talent to the current developers because they're always looking for something else. I mean, if you've got an idea that is awesome and you say, man, this would really make a great addition. Why start a new one when you can just say, you know, go to their user group or their developer group and say, I have this idea and this is it and this is the software or theming or whatever. What do you (12/54)
think? And because I don't know many Linux distributions that would turn down a fantastic idea. Just, you know, yeah, you're not going to say you get to create your own personal distro, but you will get to say if they if you join the development. I'm one of the developers. I helped develop Linux Mint, which you're enjoying right now. So he did say if you're just doing it to learn, then he was all for it. And like I said, there's nothing to stop you. But instead of maybe spreading the development for, you know, three different distributions or three or five, why don't you make contributions to one that's pretty close, find one that, you know, is trying to accomplish what you're wanting to do and then help make it better. And that way it saves a lot of work for you and you get to actually work on your pet project. Yep, there you go. Good idea. So that's I think so. I think so. And, you know, we'll have more on this topic as we get into an email later on, but we'll have a link to the (13/54)
distribution timeline in the show notes as well as links to the various articles and everything, as we always do. So if you're interested in finding out where your favorite Linux distribution came from, click the link in our show notes and you'll see. And thanks, Greg, for sending that over to us. Sorry for the rant. No, that's all right. Hey, it's good discussion. All right. Troy wrote about Grub and gave us some dual boot feedback. Hi Larry and Bill, love your show. I listen to your podcast and Steve Gibson's Security Now without fail while I commute to and from work. Right now, I am behind on yours only at episode three hundred and fifty eight today. You had a listener with Grub issues after installing Ubuntu MATE in a dual boot, I think. A while back, I did quite a few dual boot installs and had the same trouble not getting the boot screen after a successful installation. At that time, I was also installing Puppy Linux and other Linux OSes also on the same machine. So I got lots of (14/54)
things pretty messed up sometimes. Long story short, I learned that I could fix the problem by booting to a live instance of Puppy Linux, then use its Grub repair utility to repair Grub. It worked very well. Maybe the same could also be done with a live instance of Mint or MATE, but I've never tried that. I have all old machines except one, and I only install Mint XFCE on them to get the most out of them. They all work great. I tried using Ubuntu MATE a few times, but each time I had trouble. Sorry, but I can't remember the problems anymore. But since Mint always worked for me, I stay with it. My newest machine is a seventh generation i7 processor in a desktop and with Windows 10 on it. It also has Mint XFCE on it, but I didn't want to dual boot. So I instead thought it would be smart and put Mint on its own SSD, which worked fine. But guess what? Booting problems again. My original plan was to simply choose the OS by pressing F8 while booting. Well, after endless bio tweaks, I (15/54)
couldn't get the F8 boot choice to work with the Linux choice. So I got smart again and made a switch to apply power to the hard drive of my choice before powering on the machine. That way I could just boot straight into the operating system I wanted, and the other hard drive would be unpowered and unseen by the BIOS. But this didn't work smooth either. No problem if you just boot into one or the other OS. But when you make the switch, then you have to go back into the BIOS to fix it. Pain in the neck. I would like to blame Windows 10 on this, but I'm probably just missing something. Anyway, love your show. Thanks, Troy. So, Bill, I think I have an idea here, but how about you? I'm still processing this one. So let me get this straight. He's got a desktop that has Windows 10, and the processor is irrelevant. Windows 10, I would say, is... not maybe the calls, but sometimes Windows 10 doesn't play nice. I know it hasn't been an issue with the latest Ubuntu, if you're doing a dual boot, (16/54)
but he said he didn't want to put it on the same disk, so that's why he got another one. Does he have to add an argument to a boot menu somewhere? That's the only thing I can think of. I have to think about it. I'm not quite sure. Yeah, well, it's possible. If he's actually using Grub to do the booting, he might have to use the nomodset, or n-o-m-o-d-s-e-t, command on there as part of the Grub configuration. But what I'm thinking is, since this is a new machine with Windows 10, it's possible that he may need to go into the BIOS or the UEFI setup. Secure Boot, yeah. I think he may have to turn that off, and it might be called Secure Boot, or what else do they call it? They call it a few other things. Maybe I'm hallucinating again, but didn't they find a way to work around that? I thought they had already fixed that, because I know Ubuntu doesn't have a problem with it. But then again, one of the first things I do is I turn off Secure Boot. So I can't say with any reasonable confidence (17/54)
what's going on, but I think maybe try to turn off Secure Boot. That might solve the problem. Yeah, and it might be called Legacy Boot. You might have to enable Legacy Boot in the BIOS. That might do it. You're quite right, Bill, that Ubuntu and several other distributions have provided ways to solve this problem. But from what I'm hearing, it doesn't work on every single computer, because the BIOS may be provided by somebody different. So there may be this situation where, even though you're using Ubuntu or something as modern as that, that you need to actually make a setting change in the BIOS. There's another option. Since it's a desktop, maybe he could find out the manufacturer of that and make sure he's running the most current BIOS. And maybe there's an update for it. Another thing is, it might be one of those boards that just doesn't have really good Linux support. It might be using some kind of wonky chipset. Yeah, so first thing I would check is make sure you're using the (18/54)
latest version of the BIOS. So if there's a BIOS update, do that and test it again. And if not, check that you have Legacy Boot or Secure Boot turned off or something like that. So that would be my suggestion as kind of the first and second choice. Yeah, let us know how this one goes. This is kind of interesting. Yeah, thanks, Troy. Alright, our next one comes from Highlander, who sent us an email about hiding files. I've noticed some odd behavior in Windows 10 that in itself is not unusual. But it seems as though Windows has the ability to hide files whenever a computer is booted in a different way. USB, DVD, NIC port. I've looked at the files in a OneDrive file folder using two methods, USB booting and hard drive. The first time I booted to Linux using USB, I was able to see the contents of the OneDrive file folder. I let the computer boot to Windows. After that, but didn't put in the password, I restarted the computer and booted back to Linux, USB. I looked in the OneDrive file (19/54)
folder a second time. The file folder looked totally empty. I let the computer boot to Windows a second time. Then I put in the correct password and looked in the OneDrive file folder a third time. Then this time the files were visible. So I'm curious, does Linux have the means to find files that are hidden by Windows 10 Highlander? Yeah, it depends on how Windows 10 is hiding them. And I really don't know. It could be that they are encrypted within that folder, that OneDrive folder. And I'm assuming that since OneDrive is Microsoft's online file storage, that he's got a way to sync that over to his hard drive on his computer. So what I think is going on here, when you boot into Windows and you put in the password, it unencrypts them. You shut it off and it remains unencrypted for some reason. Security risk. But anyway, when you boot back into Linux, after that, you end up with the ability to see the files. But when you log into Windows, don't put in the password for OneDrive. And then (20/54)
reboot back into Linux, it is actually encrypted because you didn't put the password in. I don't know any of that for sure, but that's kind of what I suspect. You know, I know for a fact that if, I don't know about the OneDrive, I think you might be onto something there, Larry. Is that say, and I've done this, so where I needed, when I was running a dual boot, I'm not anymore, I'm running just straight Ubuntu. I would be able to mount the Windows partition, go into my documents folder, my pictures folder, my music and drag that over to my Linux partition just fine. So I'm thinking that you're right, that maybe OneDrive is using some kind of encryption and therefore you can't see unless you put the password in. One thing you might test is on your, you know, when you're booted to Linux, log into OneDrive online and you might be able to access the files that way from online. Of course, that doesn't help you when you're offline. But that may be one way to get them. And maybe you already (21/54)
know that Highlander and that's fine. I know that wasn't your question. But, you know, if the question is trying to get access to those files, getting them from online while in Linux might be the alternative. I do have a question for you, Larry, and I'm not quite sure it's along the same vein as what we've been talking about. You know, in some of the, I guess, all the current mainline distributions, if you're installing it, it gives you the option to encrypt your home folder. And a lot of them recommend that. Does Windows offer anything like that? I think they do. I've heard that they do. Yeah. So I think that's, and they may actually encrypt it by default unless you tell it not to. I don't know for sure. I haven't used, I haven't installed Windows 10 ever. And I have used Windows 10 and I haven't looked to see if the files are encrypted or not on that machine. So, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I was just curious because I don't know, I mean, because I've reinstalled Windows 10 before and (22/54)
I don't remember ever seeing that option. Yeah, they may not, they may not give you the option. It may just be you're getting this stuff encrypted or you want it or not. You're getting it whether you like it or not. Okay. Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, let's continue on with our next email. This one's from George from Tulsa. He has feedback from Episode 369, William and the Unmountable Drive. Very early in my Linux conversation, I used Clonezilla to duplicate a boot drive. Then I wanted to see, as I am familiar with doing on Macs with drives cloned by Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper, if the clone worked. It wouldn't mount. This took me down a frustrating effort to understand UUID and what and when it changes. What I found for sure is that Clonezilla clones the UUID, Universal Unique Identifier. And two drives with the same UUID won't both mount on the same system. That kind of makes sense. I gather it is impossible to change the UUID through the command line, but hey, you'd have to (23/54)
get the drive mounted to do that. I just gave up in that effort. Timeshift, which comes with Mint and I presume can be run on other distros, does a fine job of saving what's important and reinstalling a totally borked Linux from a live USB and it takes only minutes. Maybe William ran into the same UUID issues I found and never mastered. Though if he had a boot drive he had removed, then he reinstalled the boot drive as the only bootable drive in the system. UUID should not rear its incomprehensible complexities. That implies his drive died. Could it have been removed from the machine while the machine and thus the drive were powered? He goes on to give some feedback for Scott and his issues on TRIM. I've had a couple of experiences with SSDs on Macs before it became possible to enable TRIM. On a 15-inch MacBook Pro, I filled the 500GB SSD drive by copying in large amounts of data, then decided to erase everything, including the operating system and start over with a clean operating (24/54)
system install and the same large amount of data. The Crucial brand SSD effectively became sludge. Not quite freezing up, but not working right either. I followed instructions by Crucial to enable TRIM, deleted everything, and leave a computer on so the SSD was powered by the computer itself, not booted. That enabled Crucial's garbage collection routine to clear out the mess I had created. Poor computer got so hot I aimed a fan at it while I let it work overnight. The next morning, I reinstalled the OS and my large data files, and it worked fine for several years. TRIM is difficult to explain. If a user deletes a file in an operating system, what's actually deleted is the file's place on the OS index. Data on the hard drive isn't deleted and can be recovered. That was the magic of Norton's undelete. On SSDs, the data that's deleted is still filling memory cells, but those cells can't be overwritten until they're erased by the SSD controller. Before TRIM, the earliest Intel SSDs simply (25/54)
filled up with data and stopped working. TRIM tells the SSD controller a file has been deleted and its cells can be cleaned out by garbage collection routine. Without TRIM, that data will persist, eventually killing the drive because we sure don't want our SSD controllers deleting files simply because they haven't been accessed recently. What helps reduce SSDs from filling up is files which are opened and modified can, from what I read, be managed without TRIM. TRIM tells the SSD controller, clear that data out. TRIM is important. But modern large SSDs make it less urgent. It also helps that SATA SSDs have fallen into the petty-cache range. Thunderbolt is supposed to be able to pass TRIM. Doesn't mean all Thunderbolt enclosures will do that. UASP is important for speeding USB throughput. Don't buy USB drives without it. And he provides a link to an article that's entitled, All You Need to Know About UASP. SecureErase, available on SATA and NVMe drives, will restore SSDs to their (26/54)
original performance by erasing all their memory cells. And thanks, George. Lots of background information on the technical details of hard drives and SSD drives and TRIM and all that stuff. So hopefully some of that will help somebody. It's certainly an education for sure. Yeah, I didn't know that they would, before they got TRIM, that they would just fill up and die. That's funny. Well, yeah, it's expensive, but funny, yeah. No, I'm just amazed that no one thought that one through. I mean, sometimes I'm just like, no one thought of that? Well, thank you, TRIM. And thank you, George. So Highlander wrote again about communication security. Since there now appears to be a generalized dislike of not only Facebook, but the entire social media idea itself, perhaps now should be a good time to develop better communication security options. Let's start with phone calls. If a telecommunication provider has control of the entire communication pipe from end to end, it is easier to seal off that (27/54)
pipe from prying eyes and ears. I can see the day when the data carrying capability of the Canadian domestic phone system will handle both audio and video. The kicker is the Canadian domestic phone system will not need access to internet to accomplish this. So think of it. Someone in New Falman can make a video phone call to someone in British Columbia and not need the internet to accomplish this. When you seal off the domestic Canadian phone system from the internet, you increase its security. Further, if a single telecommunications provider has control of the entire communications pipe, it becomes easier to seal off even more prying eyes and ears. For Canadian security reasons, I believe that the right thing to do is to keep domestic phone system completely separate from the internet. It just isn't right for someone in China to have the ability to eavesdrop on Canadian domestic telecommunications. I believe that keeping our phone system separate from the internet will cut down on the (28/54)
odds of being eavesdropped upon by an international third party. Today smartphones can be operated in a different way. I think you need to be reminded that it's possible for you to temporarily turn off your internet access. All you need to do is change a setting in your handset. Then your smartphone will operate exclusively like a telephone, not an internet device. I thought you needed to be made aware of these options, so think of it. If you are not actively using the internet on your smartphone, why would you leave the internet access turned on? When you do that, you substantially increase the odds of someone eavesdropping on you. To conclude this message, I would invite you to look up Canadian law requiring wire tapping. One good place to start would be the Law Society of Upper Canada for answers to any questions you might have about wire tapping and it includes the link. Okay, so yeah, I don't know whether the US phone system is completely independent of the internet. However, I do (29/54)
know that if you turn off Wi-Fi, for example, you can still connect to the internet if you give permissions for the phone to use cellular data to access the internet. So I know there's at least the possibility it can connect, but the question is, is it completely independent? I don't know. And it sounds like Highlander has identified that in Canada, at least it is. Well, I was under the impression, and this could be incorrect, but I don't think so. A lot of the old legacy switches, the hardware switches that the phone companies used for so many years have been replaced with internet appliances because they're much more efficient. They can use the internet to route a lot of the voice traffic more efficiently and they also can be software updated. And I don't know, it might be the same in your business, but in our business, we actually have VoIP phones, voice over internet protocol. The whole office is like that. Right. All our phones, I mean, they operate just like regular phones, (30/54)
except if you lose power or you lose internet, everything stops working. So I know there's got to be a switch somewhere that takes that VoIP protocol and it has to use the phone system to complete the calls because your phone talks to the tower, tower then sends it over to the next tower, which you got to have a connection. So they're all kind of in a woven now. And I don't know, is that what you think? Or do you think it's like the 1970s phone systems where everything was kind of hard switched? Yeah, I think there's more software switches than anything at this point in time, except maybe for some remote areas that don't have a lot of budget to upgrade their systems. I'm sure there's some hard switches still in place. But yeah, I think you're right. I think that the phone systems and the internet are interconnected, at least in some way. In order for VoIP and other technologies to work, it kind of makes sense that it would work that way. And I know things like Skype, which gives you (31/54)
VoIP, voice over internet, and FaceTime, which gives you video and voice over the internet for Apple devices and things like that work in multiple countries, including Canada. I see what he's getting from that if you have one pipe and you control the beginning and the end, then you don't have anything in the middle that is more secure. But the problem is, what happens when you go outside, say here in British Columbia, and you're making a call to California? Well, you're going outside to that. There's not one phone company controls. There's multiple switches and exchanges. So, once you go outside your area, then you kind of lost that point to point, because then you have to have other entities switching that information. Does that make sense? Right. Yeah, it does. And I think that this just illustrates the point that if you want security, you're not going to have the convenience of being able to switch between internet calls and standard, plain old telephone system calls, like just (32/54)
having the system do that for you. It's the balance between security and convenience. And so, if we were to separate the two systems, then things would become inconvenient, like making calls to another country that doesn't have the same protocols. Anyway, that's something to think about, though. I like where you're going with this, Highlander. It's one way to implement better security when talking about telecommunications. So, moving on, David asked the question, have you seen these articles? Hi, Larry and Bill. I came across these two articles. I have a Google Alert set up for Linux Mint. If you haven't read them, I think you should. I'm curious about your thoughts, whether privately, via email, or publicly on the podcast. Bestest. David, your ex-pat. Forget it. You know who I am. Yes, we do, David. Okay. And he sends us links to a ZDNet article entitled The Linux Desktop's Last Best Shot. And Tech Republic article, Scientific Linux and Antergos are shutting down. It's time for Linux (33/54)
Mint to go. And this is related to the earlier discussion we had about Linux distributions. And this was discussed, I think, at least tangentially on the Ubuntu podcast. It was discussed on the Mint cast. And now we're discussing it on our podcast. The one about Scientific Linux and Antergos are shutting down. It's time for Linux Mint to go. I agree with the folks from the Mint cast that that's a bunch of clickbait in that title of the article. And when they get into the article, it's not really as bad or dire as they're trying to make it seem in the title. And that's kind of the definition of clickbait, I think. And so they discuss in the article about the demise of a couple of distributions. Their point about Linux Mint is Linux Mint's reason for being seems to be to fuel the Cinnamon desktop. And if it weren't for Cinnamon, maybe we don't even need Linux Mint. And the discussion on other podcasts has been around the fact that Linux Mint has made a lot of contributions to ease of (34/54)
use. And so just describing it as simply being there to foster Cinnamon development is a little over the top. They talk about Scientific Linux going away and folks kind of centralizing on CentOS. And we had the discussion around, you know, too many Linux distributions isn't necessarily what you want. And the other article, Linux Desktop's Last Best Shot by Stephen J. Von Nichols and ZDNet, it talks about Windows 7 support going away and Windows 10 in terms of various aspects, not the least of which is sales, is just barely ahead of Windows 7 adoptions. So, you know, those people that are still on Windows 7 are going to have to move over to Windows 10, whether they like it or not. And maybe Linux Mint or other Linux distributions are an alternative. It's kind of a rehash of the same old thing that comes up every time a version goes out of support, which is maybe we'll get more users for Linux out of this. And maybe we will. I kind of hope we will. But, you know, it remains to be seen (35/54)
and it remains that Windows is still the most popular operating system for computers out there. As far as desktop operating systems are concerned, when you talk about servers and computers overall, including servers and embedded devices and things like that, Linux is the most popular one out there. So I don't think there's anything new in either of these articles, quite frankly. No, I looked at the Tech Republic and I also read the ZD. The ZD was OK. It was an article. The Tech Republic one, I have to say, was very click baity. For Linux Mint to go, I don't see the reason. For a long time, we said, hey, if you're coming from Windows, use Linux Mint. And Linux Mint is not a bad option for a new user who's leaving the Windows ecosystem because it's similar enough to be comfortable. The Cinnamon is one of my favorite desktops. They've really made some contributions and they've, you know, they've given back to. And, you know, I would say that Linux Mint serves a very valid position and (36/54)
purpose. It is a good choice for some people. It's very friendly. It's for not intimidating. And so, yeah, I think this guy kind of added that just to get the link bait thing going. You know, whether whatever your feelings of Linux Mint or where their stance is or how they develop their software, wherever it is, it's it's one I think has contributed quite a bit to open source community. And I don't think it's going to go anywhere anytime soon. Now, you know, Scientific Linux was by FIRRMA and CERN and they had some tools that they needed at the time. You know, so it made sense for them to standardize on on that because it wasn't available then. And so I can understand, hey, I'm using the same software you are with the same applications. And so, yeah, that made sense. But now that those applications can be easily used in SENT or even or even, you know, Red Hat, which is basically SENT OS is just Red Hat with that enterprise without its trademark stuff. So why continue developing it? And (37/54)
Antagross, you know. They they run for like I think it was like a project they've been around for like seven years. And it isn't like they don't have anywhere to go. They they they're they have what is it? Manjiro. Yeah. So Manjiro is still there and it's so easy to use. And and it isn't like that if you run an Antagross, it's going to stop working. You know, it will continue working. I think they're going to they're going to issue patches that will point the repos to the standard arch repositories. And, you know, they didn't just disappear. They said this is what's happening. You know, we've got families now. We're going to school. We've got full time jobs. You know, we've done this for seven years. Thank you for your support. You know, so I don't see this is a what I would say a non story. It was just that I have to write an article and I need lots of clicks. So this is what I'm going to do. So let's move on to something better. Yeah, we've yeah, let's move on. We've talked about (38/54)
this stuff with no content for way too long. So let's go. OK, so our next email comes from G rub, a.k.a. Grubb, and he wrote, Hi, Bill and Larry. Hey, I got top billing Larry. Yeah, that never happened. Yeah. I am very, very OK. So hi, Bill and Larry. I'd like to request the script Troy uses for the setup of Linux Mint systems. Thanks in advance. Furthermore, I'd like to recommend to you both on the format and information you provide to new Linux users and not so new Linux users. I never fail to learn something every episode. I find that the listener feedback podcast particularly interesting and informative. Also, over the last month, I found your back catalog of podcasts to a wealth of information, largely very relevant and good reference material. Along with other resources on the Web, they helped me decide on my going Linux goals and how to do it. I am in the process of rediscovering desktop links again since dual booting Linux Mint 13 mate on an old HP laptop many years ago. (39/54)
Desktop links today has impressed me with the ease of use improvements to functional progress and a wide array of choices available. I am currently multi booting a Windows XP laptop 2009 Intel Core Duo 2 at 2.4 gigahertz and a Windows 7 laptop 2016 Intel i7 at 2.8 gigahertz. Using the Windows bootloaders between the two laptops, I am enjoying kicking the tires of five different Ubuntu based distros. Slowly, I am figuring out which distros and desktop environments are really better for my oldest hardware and a friend's older 2006 hardware AMD Turan 64 X2 at 1.61 gigahertz with 1 gigabyte of RAM and still meets our needs. So far, on the lightweight side, I have to say that the LX-LE1604 and Linux Mint 18.3 XFCE have performed well. I'd like to see how well LX-LE performs on 2006 hardware. If not satisfied, I will possibly explore Peppermint OS or a LX-QT like OS or even Cub Linux which you just introduced to me in a recent podcast. For the more powerful Intel i7, I am partial to Ubuntu (40/54)
Mate and Linux Mint Cinnamon, although I would like to take a look at Pop! OS in the future. Keep up the good work. Much appreciated, grub. Wow. Good for you. The only thing I would say is, isn't 1604 out of support now, Larry? Didn't they just kill that? Yeah, I think it is. And this isn't an old email. So it may just be that, you know, it's taken him a little while to write this up. He's got a few computers, so maybe it was done a little while ago or maybe he's just using an old version. So I don't know. We're not judging. I'm not judging. I'm just saying, I think 1604 officially ended not long ago. That was an LTS, wasn't it? I believe it was, if I remember correctly. Yeah, it's two years before 1804. So you should probably look at going in and going to 1804. It should be very similar to 1604. You'll probably see some improvements. Hey Larry, looks like another Mate has got another victim. They like it. Yeah, absolutely. That's good. Grub wrote back and said, Hi Larry, thank you for (41/54)
the script instructions and your quick response. I tried to make my previous email short and sweet and therefore left out many details. I suspect I am in a small last wave of folks needing to use Windows XP and switching to Linux. Although there may be more in the coming Windows 7 wave, if there are questions, I'll be happy to provide my approach and learnings during this journey to Linux. Update on the 2006 laptop hardware. AMD Trion 64x2, 1.61GHz, 1GB of RAM. I managed to upgrade the memory to a maximum of 2GB of RAM for about $20, which made a significant performance improvement and hopefully will prolong the utility of this hardware. I should say here that the goal for this laptop is portable basic computing. Email, music, web surfing, YouTube, word processing, Skype, etc. I think this goal has not only been reached, but will exceed in many cases. Barring hardware problems, I feel confident the Linux Mint 18.03 OS being able to reach LTS 2021 or maybe even LTS 2023 with an upgrade. (42/54)
I am still enjoying your previous podcast, but should catch up within the next week. Keep up the good work. GRUB aka GRUB. Thanks GRUB and thanks for the update. It sounds like you're moving ahead with an eye on moving to the 2023 LTS. Okay, that's planning ahead. Yeah, that is planning ahead. Let me just make a couple suggestions to him since he sent that update. Linux Mint has the tweak that if you like the Cinnamon desktop and just don't really want to keep switching between Linux Mint and Mate, you can switch your desktop to Cinnamon in Linux Mate. It's not quite as polished, but I mean it's all there. It looks pretty good. I was playing with it. I think it's called Redmond. It's pretty close. And then the other one, if you're just using that 64-bit AMD, the music and web surfing and YouTube, it should work fine for what you're using on word processing. The only thing that I think you might have a problem with is they keep updating Skype and that's one of the reasons that we kind (43/54)
of stopped using it. We kept having upgrade issues and connect issues. If you remember all the troubles we had, we had to go back and use an old version a couple times just because a new version broke everything. Yeah, the problem wasn't so much they kept upgrading, but when they upgraded, they would break it. Yeah, they would break it. It just got to the point of it getting silly. Actually, it was kind of funny. We kept a spare copy of it just in case we needed it really quick. Yeah, I think it's sitting there in our shared Dropbox. So, yeah, just be aware that Skype might, since you have such a, I wouldn't say low-resource computer, but a computer with limited resources, that one of these days Skype might start causing some issues. So, there's other options. Just want to kind of let you know. Our next email comes from Greg, who wrote about Nick's problem with LibreOffice. I am a new listener and I had the same no spell checking issue with LibreOffice that was mentioned in episode (44/54)
small USB stick. That may be one of the things they decided to remove. That's not becoming much of an issue because USB drives now or the little sticks are getting bigger and cheaper all the time. I see what you're saying. They probably said, well, we can save a few megabytes here so you start doing it, paring your things down. That makes sense. Yeah, I still have some two gigabyte USB sticks laying around with old Linux distributions on them. Sometimes the newer ones won't fit. Gotta go to a four gigabyte or an eight gigabyte. You can't even buy those now. I went out and got a 32 gigabyte one, a USB 3, and I paid 19 bucks for it. Yeah. Well, and you can get them as big as I think 256 now. Yeah, you're talking some money. 512. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You're paying more. But yeah, they get cheaper all the time. Like you said. Love technology. Okay. Yeah, there we go. All right. Our last email is from Ro who asked, why won't she boot? Hello. I love the podcast. Very good information for a (46/54)
newcomer to Linux. Here's my dilemma. I'm not a computer novice. However, I am new to Linux. I have an older five year old Alienware laptop with a RAID array setup. I wanted to run Linux natively, but on an external SSD or USB 3.0. I opted for the external 128 gigabyte SSD. Now, the distro I chose was Linux Mint 19 and I could easily boot and run the live CD. But when I partitioned the SSD and attempted to get the Alienware to boot Mint, I get absolutely nothing. Blank, nada, zilch. Just a white cursor blinking on a black screen. While I do have an old 2010 Dell Inspiron with the VGA ports in the back as my test laptop, I boot from USB using the external SSD with Linux Mint and it runs beautifully. No hiccups. It's flawless. But who wants to use that old relic in Starbucks? So I decided to visit a local computer repair store and found a guy that could install a Linux distro on an SSD. So he installed Ubuntu and charged me $100. I was quite reluctant, but wanted it to just work. He (47/54)
attempted to boot from my USB on my Alienware and here again, nothing. Same result. He went in the back and tried it on other CPUs and it worked beautifully. He told me Linux will only work on RAID 1 or RAID 5 or no RAID. My current RAID is RAID 0. So here I go baffled again. I completely reformatted and removed RAID altogether and just have two 500GB SSDs. After an hour of reinstalling all my Windows programs, the point of no return. I booted my new Ubuntu SSD on the cleaned up Alienware and nothing once again. At this point, I'm very discouraged and said, let's see if the old Dell Inspiron relic can run this. Sure enough, the relic was successful. It booted Ubuntu just fine. Since then, I've tested our elementary and Xorin OS. None work as permanent install on SSD with Alienware. They only work with a live CD while the relic can run every distribution under the sun. I don't know if you can help me with this issue because it's definitely got me stumped. I am in the market to get a new (48/54)
Asus Pro Duo once it releases and a Surface Book 2 13-inch. But now I'm skeptical because I'm wondering will Linux even work on either. I'm really wanting to run any Linux distro at this point on the Alienware, but it just won't boot from an external SSD. And I don't know why. I'm sure I could partition a portion of my internal SSD and install directly. But I'm not really fond of the dual boot setup. Can you guys help me with this? I don't know. Has anyone ever heard of this? Thanks, guys. OK, so I'm going to make a couple of suggestions here and then I'm going to leave it to you, Bill, since you're the one who has had experience with Alienware and you've run into some bumps and grinds on this as well. But yeah, Alienware is kind of funky in terms of the way they've implemented things and hardware. My suggestions are between the Asus Pro Duo and the Surface Book, go with the Asus Pro Duo. I've heard some feedback on Surface Book that it is a nice, slick hardware device. You can get it (49/54)