Series 2 Episode 6 – Back to normal again and we discuss installing Ubuntu 17.10, Firefox education, Raspberry Pi SSH tips, Shut up Windows 10, Command Line Linux tools and another epic Irish saying, have a listen.
00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Season 2 Episode 6 of the binary times by telling us that he loves Autumnal weather. It’s cloudy in Bristol and cloudy, windy and raining in Kilkishen. Wayne informs Mark that clothes are available to keep the rain away and will send on some links on same. Podcast Gold!
02:49 Mark tells us that he’s installed Ubuntu 17.10 with the new default gnome desktop, and so far he thinks it’s not so bad. He also discusses ubuntu-restricted-extras and the microsoft true type core fonts which sparks a conversation around finding common ground between using free software and free software formats and proprietary software usage.
07:55 Based on Wayne’s slowly moving towards using more free software in his life, he decided to try Lineage OS 14.1 once more on his Samsung Galaxy S III without any google apps. It didn’t go well as the new os refused to recognise his sim, resulting in him going back to Cyanogenmod.
11:19 Wayne tells us that he’s completely moved over to using duckduckgo and he doesn’t miss google at all. Mark agrees and finds he doesn’t even have to use !g anymore.
12:41 Wayne continues on his freedom loving march by telling us that he’s replaced his Chromecasts with Kodi boxes running on Raspberry Pi Zero Ws and he can control them remotely from his phone using Kore. Mark admits to still using Netflix and Amazon Prime Video and other proprietary media formats using DRM and mentions the recent tragic events where EME has been accepted by the W3C.
17:18 Wayne talks about the hurdles you need to overcome to get into the Raspberry Pi, and tells us of a neat little image writer called etcher that makes it easy to write an image to the SD card without overwriting anything else by mistake. Mark reminds us of dcfldd and how it gives more visual cues towards the progress of the write than dd.
21:28 Wayne tells us about archive.org. The guys love it, recommend it and love the mission statement.
24:36 Wayne shockingly provides a Windows 10 tip. ShutUp 10 is a little freeware tool that allows you to turn off windows 10 chatty features. Both agree that the OS will still be talking back to the mothership anyway, just not as much. Mark agrees that this is a good tip. Mark’s tip to shut up Windows 10 is to download Ubuntu or Ubuntu MATE, create a startup disk and replace Windows altogether.
27:44 Mark tells us about Firefox’s educational addons.
28:50 Mark talks about games for Ubuntu MATE and linux in general. He lists out several, starting with arcade type games:
Frozen Bubble – apparently responsible for Debian being late for a release!
SuperTuxKart – soon to be available on steam
First Person Shooters (FPS) would include:
Nexuiz Classic
Xonotic
Sauerbraten
Smokin Guns
Assault Cube
Alien Arena
Unvanquished
Some strategy examples include:
0AD
Free Civ
The list goes on!
30:41 Mark talks about the Open Source Community on Steam, its owner and lauds his philosophy of promoting open source within proprietary communities.
31:54 Mark tells us that reddit is another way to find out more about open source gaming. Mark goes on to tell us that the Humble Bundle Store is currently giving away Outlast and admits to using Steam despite his freedom loving stance, currently playing Dreamfall Chapters and Shadow Warrior. He rationalizes it by telling us he does his gaming on Linux.
34:44 Mark has a strange start to Under the Hood where he tells us first how to maintain a stable system before going on to give us his tip for installing random packaged debs from the web and that is to use dpkg –contents randompackage.deb to see the contents of the deb package and to see where the contents will be installed. Mark goes on to mention getdeb as a place where he gets his games from.
39:42 Wayne’s under the hood is another controversial one and it is how to turn off the ssh default password enabled message. He has good reasons to do this, honest! So to remove the message, type the following into a terminal:
sudo mv /etc/profile.d/sshpwd.sh /etc/profile.d/sshpwd.sh.old
Of course all the usual disclaimers apply.
43:45 Irish saying of the podcast is “Tá sé ag cur báistí” It is raining. Us Irish love talking about the weather!
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