mintCast 160: Is Microsoft Lagging?

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News:

• Cinnamon 1.8 gets released. (cinnamon.linuxmint.com)
• International Space Station switches from Windows to Linux, for improved reliability . (extremetech.com)
• Open Compute to open source high-end network switches. (zdnet.com)
• Ubuntu To Get Its Own Package Format, App Installer. (phoronix.com)
• Desktop Support for Ubuntu 10.04 LTS & 11.10 Officially Ends. (omgubuntu.co.uk)
• Google’s cloud dumps custom Linux, switches to Debian. (theregister.co.uk)
• Josh Boyer of Red Hat compares the Fedora and Ubuntu kernels. (jwboyer.livejournal.com)
• Half Life 2 is now available on Steam for Linux. (phoronix.com)
• Valve’s Gabe Newell To Keynote LinuxCon 2013. (phoronix.com)

The Main Topic:

• Microsoft is lagging behind Linux in performance. (tgdaily.com)
• “I Contribute to the Windows Kernel. We Are Slower Than Other Operating Systems. Here Is Why.” (blog.zorinaq.com)

Featured Websites:

• Morten Juhl-Johansen Zőlde-Fejér tells us, “I am a heavy podcast user, but a few of them stand out. I did an article on this kind of casts worthy of support. (writtenandread.net)
• Also from Morten, “As for your mention of Newsbeuter, I did an introduction to using it for podcatching.” (http://writtenandread.net/newsbeuter/)

Tip:

• Michael sends us this tip, “I couldn’t help feeling sorry for you when you mentioned the “tree” command this week. You said that it beats navigating the directory hierarchy and typing “ls”, “cd ..” etc. Maybe you’ve not heard of the “find” command? Surely you have! But if you had, you wouldn’t be doing that! find lets you specify a shell pattern to match against file names at any level in the directory hierarchy.” (linux.die.net)

mintCast 159: Catching up with James

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News:

• The Mint development team launches a new blog. (Segfault.Linuxmint.com )
• Debian 7.0 Wheezy is released. (Debian.org )
• SolydXK gets added to the DistroWatch database. (Ostatic.com )
• Lightworks Linux public beta is finally available for download. (Webupd8.com )
• Iron Penguin: First open-source “Iron Man” suit within reach? (ZDNet.com )

The Main Topic:

• Catching up with James.

Featured Website: (Thanks to Merely Jim)

• Run Linux on your Chromebook with Crouton. (Blogspot.com )

Tip: (Thanks to Beardy Jesse)

• The tree command. It’s a really simple command that allows you to see a tree type view of a folder hierarchy. I use it if I’m unsure of where a file/folder is, as it saves constantly having to use the ‘ls’ command in every folder to find a sub-sub-sub directory. I’d suggest limiting the depth with the -L flag because if you use it in your root directory, as it can return far too many results to be useful!

mintCast 158: Foss – Doomed or Dominating?

News:

• Ubuntu 13.04 is released, while 13.10 gets a name. (LinuxUser.co.uk )

• Originally thought to be assured passaged, CISPA dies in the US Senate. (FossForce.com )

• MariaDB merges with SkySQL. (ZDNet.com )

• Fuduntu Done Now, All Hail FuSE. (OStatic.com )

• Announcing Outreach Program for Women Internships for the Linux Kernel. (Linux.com )

• Left 4 Dead 2 public beta coming next week, will include Linux version of game. (Polygon.com )

The Main Topic:

• Is open source software taking over the Enterprise? (PCWorld.com )

• Or is it doomed to failure? (TheRegister.com )

Tip:

• How to install .sh and .bin files on Linux Mint – shamelessly stolen from Tim Lawless over at the Linux Mint G+ community. (Link )

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Hosts:: Rob, Scott, James

Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org

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Contact Us:

Forum: forums.linuxmint.com

Email: mintcast@mintcast.org

Twitter: @mintCast @Linux_Mint @3dbeef @jamescoyner @txhawkins

IRC: irc.spotchat.org – #mintcast

Google+: mintCast

YouTube: mintCast Productions

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

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

mintCast 157: The World of Desktop BSD

News:

• Open source desktop developers meet at freedesktop Summit. (h-online.com)

• Debian 7 Wheezy gets a tentative release date. (ostatic.com)

• More information on the demise of Fuduntu. (fuduntu.org)

• Parallella: The $99 Linux supercomputer. (zdnet.com)

The Main Topic: Desktop BSD

• The History of BSD, Berkeley Software Distribution. (wikipedia.org)

• FreeBSD. (freebsd.org)

• DragonFly BSD. (dragonflybsd.org)

• Ghost BSD. (ghostbsd.org)

• PC-BSD. (pcbsd.org)

Feedback Notes:

• mockturtl: Web MIDI coming to Blink. (blink-dev)

Featured Website:

• BSD Magazine: For Novice and Advanced Users. (bsdmag.org)

Tip:

• Another one from James Eaton: Have you ever seen a train running on Linux command line? Have you ever seen ‘Tom and Jerry’ on Linux command line? Well, working on Linux command line is not that serious always. There lies a fun factor too. Here in this space, we shall discuss the idiosyncrasies of Linux command line. (mylinuxbook.com)

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More Information:

Hosts:: Rob, Scott, James

Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org

Subscribe: [iTunes] [Zune] [RSS MP3] [RSS OGG]

Contact Us:

Forum: forums.linuxmint.com

Email: mintcast@mintcast.org

Twitter: @mintCast @Linux_Mint @3dbeef @jamescoyner @txhawkins

IRC: irc.spotchat.org – #mintcast

Google+: mintCast

YouTube: mintCast Productions

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

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

mintCast 156: Ken Starks

News:

• GNOME or KDE? The Old Question Is New Today. (Datamation.com )

• Development begins on a lightweight KDE version. (H-Online.com )(KDE.org )

• Cinnarch drops Cinnamon for GNOME. (H-Online )

• Clem comments on Cinnamon and its development. (Github.com )

• Fedora 19 Alpha Gets Its First Delay Due To UEFI. (Phoronix.com )

The Main Topic:

• An interview with Ken Starks:

Featured Websites:

• Reglue – A Child’s Exposure to Technology Should Never Be Predicated On The Ability To Afford It (Reglue.org)

• The Blog of Helios (Blogspot.com )

• Linux Advocates (LinuxAdvocates.com )

Featured Tip:

• All about SUID – thanks again to James Eaton (Linuxnix.com )

Announcements:

• The new LinuxBasix podcast has released three episodes, avaiable here: (LinuxBasix.com )

• Feedback welcome here: (LinuxBasix Forums )

• Thanks to Brad Alexander for this link to a map of the Linux Distribution Timeline: (Wikimedia.org )

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More Information:

Hosts:: Rob, Scott, James

Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org

Subscribe: [iTunes] [Zune] [RSS MP3] [RSS OGG]

Contact Us:

Forum: forums.linuxmint.com

Email: mintcast@mintcast.org

Twitter: @mintCast @Linux_Mint @3dbeef @jamescoyner @txhawkins

IRC: irc.spotchat.org – #mintcast

Google+: mintCast

YouTube: mintCast Productions

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

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

mintCast 155: GRUB Mysteries

News:

• Dell now offering Alienware gaming PCs with Linux. (steamforlinux.com)

• OpenSUSE exec says it is an ideal time to have Linux skills. (pcworld.com)

• Intel releases a graphical installer for their Linux drivers. (omgubuntu.co.uk)

• What is Our Goal Here? (linuxadvocates.com)

• Google forks webkit, moves on to Blink. (omgchrome.com)

The Main Topic: The Mystery of GRUB

• James Eaton sent in a great link on the whole process of booting Linux. (infosecinstitute.com)

• GRUB, the GRand Unified Bootloader. “GNU GRUB is a very powerful boot loader, which can load a wide variety of free operating systems, as well as proprietary operating systems with chain-loading.”

• How does GRUB know what to boot? It reads /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
  • grub.cfg is written in GRUB’s built-in scripting language, which has a syntax quite similar to that of GNU Bash and other Bourne shell derivatives.
• The program grub-mkconfig generates a grub.cfg file based on the scripts in /etc/grub.d and the /etc/default/grub file.
• grub-mkconfig does have some limitations. While adding extra custom menu entries to the end of the list can be done by editing /etc/grub.d/40_custom or creating /boot/grub/custom.cfg, changing the order of menu entries or changing their titles may require making complex changes to shell scripts stored in /etc/grub.d/. This may be improved in the future.
• The file /etc/default/grub controls the operation of grub-mkconfig. It is sourced by a shell script, and so must be valid POSIX shell input; normally, it will just be a sequence of ‘KEY=value’ lines, but if the value contains spaces or other special characters then it must be quoted.
• ‘update-grub’ is a stub for running: ‘grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg’

• Simple changes to try…
  • Change the default OS booted:
    • Change GRUB_DEFAULT in /etc/default/grub
    • Run ‘sudo update-grub’ to update /boot/grub/grub.cfg
  • Change the colors of the GRUB screen:
    • Edit /etc/grub.d/06_mint_theme to change these lines:
      • set menu_color_normal=white/black
      • set menu_color_highlight=white/light-gray
    • Run ‘sudo update-grub’
  • Add a background graphic: (Doesn’t work in Mint because of 06_mint_theme?)
    • Move one picture that is the same size as your screen resolution to /boot/grub/ (first one found is used?)
    • Run ‘sudo update-grub’
  • Change the order of the OS list:
    • Use the “maintenance-free Grub2 menu” article… (help.ubuntu.com)
    • Involves editing the scripts in /etc/grub.d
  • Recover your system if it won’t boot due to messed up MBR:
    • This can happen if you install Windows after installing Linux, but can also happen if you change hard drive settings or and or remove a hard drive (help.ubuntu.com)

• GNU GRUB Manual 2.00~rc1. (gnu.org)

• GRUB 2′s major improvements over the original GRUB. (help.ubuntu.com)

• GRUB 2 bootloader – Full tutorial. (dedoimedo.com)

• How to Configure the Linux Grub2 Boot Menu the Easy Way (Uses a program named “Grub Customizer” from a PPA). (howtogeek.com)

Featured Website and Tip:

• How to measure the speed of your SATA devices from the command line. (linuxaria.com)

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

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Contact Us:

Forum: forums.linuxmint.com

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Twitter: @mintCast @Linux_Mint @3dbeef @jamescoyner @txhawkins

IRC: irc.spotchat.org – #mintcast

Google+: mintCast

YouTube: mintCast Productions

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

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

mintCast 154: Silver Linings Playback

Gramps Garage:

• Shelr (shelr.tv )

News:

• Linux Mint Debian 201303 released! (LinuxMint.com )

• May 9th will be Black Thursday for three Ubuntu versions. (EfyTimes.com )

• Matthew Garrett blogs about the real threat to user freedom – Restricted Boot. (Matthew’s blog )

• The Linux Foundation is providing training for NASA as it migrates away from Windows. (Linux.com )

• Ouya begins shipping game consoles to early-bird backers… (Endgadget.com )

• …while confirming that thousands of developers are coding on the platform. (TGDaily.com )

• After just six years, IBM’s Roadrunner Super Computer is retired. (Eweek.com )

• The Infamous Canterbury Project April Fools joke celebrates its 2nd anniversary (Debian.org )

The Main Topic:

• (Are todays Linux schisms a blessing in disguise? )

Featured Tip & Website in one:

• All about inodes, hard links and soft links – thanks to James Eaton (Adityapatawari.com )

Announcements:

• (SouthEast LinuxFest )

• (Make Munich )

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More Information:

Hosts:: Rob, Scott, James

Live Stream (Mondays at 8:00 p.m. Eastern): mintcast.org

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Contact Us:

Forum: forums.linuxmint.com

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Twitter: @mintCast @Linux_Mint @3dbeef @jamescoyner @txhawkins

IRC: irc.spotchat.org – #mintcast

Google+: mintCast

YouTube: mintCast Productions

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

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