Series 4 - listen to the audiocast

Merry Xmas 2018, One man down, Episode 12, Episode 11, Episode 10, Episode 9, Episode 8, Episode 7, Episode 6, Episode 5, Episode 4, Episode 3, Episode 2, Episode 1

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The Binary Times - Series 4 - Bumper Xmas Edition

Sun 23rd Dec, 2018

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us to the Super Bumper Christmas Edition of the Binary Times Audiocast! Mark comments on the synchronicity between the intro music and the Christmas tree lights that he can see and Wayne tells us of the story behind his Raspberry Pi Christmas Tree. The weather is clear in Bristol and grey in Kilkishen. Wayne apologises to our listeners for his absence last fortnight and any possible interruptions through this show.

02:14 Wayne asks Mark what has he been at. Mark tells us that he's been distro hopping like mad! Mark has tried Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 18.10, Elementary, Nitrux, Knoppix, OpenSuse Leap 15.0 and finally settled on Ubuntu 16.04. Mark also recommends the Discover LibreOffice and Getting Started with Linux 2nd Edition Linux Magazine Special Editions. Mark tells us that since he's back on Ubuntu 16.04 he's been able to play Hearts of Iron 4 to his heart's content, and recommends Ubuntu 16.04 for a trouble free desktop experience. This brings about a discussion on the benefits of using the latest and greatest releases. The guys talk about the pros and cons of Ubuntu MATE 18.04 as well. Mark says we can blame everything on Nvidia proprietary drivers.

17:49 Wayne tells us about his adventures with WD Reds, LVM and NAS. He also goes into his back up strategy.

24:54 Wayne tells us he's turned off his 5GHz because he's in tinfoil hat mode and speaks about 10 shocking facts about the Health Dangers of WiFi. Mark tells us that he had his wifi turned off for many years while his kids were young, before they got tablets... Wayne tells us that leaving mobile devices out of the places of rest is a good idea. This leads to a discussion around technology and habits. We have too many bad habits really.

28:35 Wayne tells us that he's started using Firefox Multi-Account Containers and loving it. Mark agrees they're marvelous. Mark recommends the Firefox Facebook Container. The guys discuss the limitations of technology and monetary value.

33:58 Wayne discusses some issues he had with an installation of Ubuntu Server 18.04. Mark tells us he went back to Ubuntu Server 16.04 for the web server he has for the coding club.

36:48 Mark tells us that the Open Source Community on Steam has linked to some information on NVidia's PhysX engine going open source under the BSD-3 license.

38:11 Wayne tells us about his experience with Univention, providing Secure and Flexible Identity and Access Management. Nextcloud integrated well into Univention.

42:22 Mark tells us that Hellotux have expanded the range of the Binary Times clothing and recommends Hellotux for any last minute Christmas Shopping.

43:35 Wayne tells us about the Hacking for the Holidays Humble Book Bundle.

47:54 Under the Hood - Mark's under the hood for the Christmas is use Ubuntu 16.04. He also expounds on his Christmas Wish for Canonical. He also tells us that he updated his UBPorts Ubuntu Touch to the latest update and thinks it's really good.

50:32 Wayne's under the hood is to use ctrl + and ctrl - or shift ctrl + and shift ctrl -. Wayne also has a tip as a follow up from some listener feedback for a Raspberry Pi server when trying to access it when using python 3 and that is python -m http.[server]

54:11 Irish saying of the podcast "Nollaig Shona Dhuit!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 4 - One man down

Sun 9th Dec, 2018

Timeline companion

Mark welcomes us to a rather different Binary Times Episode. Wayne isn't well, so Mark tells us about what will be coming up in the next episode, which is the Bumper Christmas Episode!

Mark mentions that the Yogcast Jingle Jam is now available and the Leadership Now bundle is also out and worth checking out!

Stay safe, keep well, get in touch and keep using free software! Slán go fóill!

 

 

 

 

 

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Its our 50th episode!
The Binary Times - Series 4 Episode 12

with Mike Saunders, Ben Klaasen and Maurizio Porrato

Sat 24th Nov, 2018

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us all to Series 4, Episode 12, our 50th Episode! Wayne explains how 12 times 4 equals 50. For this episode we have a number of guests, being Ben Klaasen, Maurizio Porrato and Mike Saunders. Wayne thanks them for their previous contributions and then asks each in turn what they've been up to in the Linux world.

03:52 Mike kicks things off by telling us that he's looking for ways to use Vim. Mike asks for any suggestions as to geeky projects that could occupy him for Christmas. Wayne suggests the Rod of Doom. Mike recalls Ben Everard's cat targetting Nerf gun, while Ben Klassen's suggestion of editing sendmail configuration files isn't exactly what Mike was looking for... Mark tells us he'll be modifying Wayne's Rod of Doom to make the game Operation sound more realistic. Wayne is happy once we're giving back to the Linux Community and Ben is impressed that the brightest minds of our generation are using their talents to solve the pressing problems of the day.

08:47 Maurizio tells us he's been busy in work deploying open source applications on proprietary Operating Systems, namely The Foreman on Windows. He's concluded from this that deploying open source solutions on proprietary operating systems is problematic. He goes on to tell us that in his spare time he is looking into self hosting the services that he is currently using, drawing inspiration from sites like privacytools.io and prism-break.org. He's also looking into ways to make his self hosted services more resilient. Ben and Maurizio discuss the challenges in hosting email and how the federated future where we self host everything will be difficult to manage. Wayne tells us that he self hosts as much as he can, apart from email.

15:10 Ben tells us that he's changed his desktop environment from Xubuntu to KDENeon. Ben's been using Ubuntu since Dapper Drake, and Xubuntu since Unity, but decided to try KDENeon to see what all the fuss was about. He really likes all the little touches that make KDE great. He goes on to tell us that he has been changing friends of his over to Linux, and has found the whole process quite interesting. This leads to a discussion about how people use software and hardware and how people should be educated in their use. The guys aren't sure if the ECDL is still a thing.

22:41 Mark tells us of his Raspberry Pi binge and his woes with the Pi-Hut. He goes on to tell us about his new Picade and how cool it is, he's really impressed with the build quality. Mark reminds us of the importance of reading Errata. Wayne reminds us of the importance of using properly rated power supplies.

27:43 Wayne tells us that he purchased two Western Digital Reds for his NAS. He compares the energy consumption of older hardware compared to newer hardware. We then talk about the differences in the different coloured Western Digital drives. The conversation moves on to the Odroid NAS which looks to be much more performant than the Raspberry Pi.

34:50 Ben kicks off Under the Hood and tells us about ABCDE and DDRescue. He recommends ABCDE's man page as very good. He also tells us that it is important to use GNU DDRescue rather than DD_Rescue as DD_Rescue's author recommends GNU DDRescue as an easier alternative.

39:46 Maurizio tells us about the benfits of using strace. This leads to a discussion around the pros and cons of using strace and / or dtrace.

43:56 Wayne tells us to use hostname -I. To get your public IP address is curl ifconfig.me

45:41 Mike's one is based on imagemagick and in particular Fred's Imagemagick page which contains a load of scripts for modifying images using imagemagick. Mike's inspired to do more with imagemagick because of this page.

48:12 Mark's Under the Hood is very seasonal and is hints on tips on ethical shopping from Mozilla and FSF's Ethical Buyer's Guide

51:35 Irish Saying of the Podcast - "Fan Noimead" One Moment

Thanks for Listening, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did making it. Thanks once again to all our contributors, you guys rock!

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 4 Episode 11

Sun 11th Nov, 2018

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Series 4, Episode 11. Bristol's nice and calm, Kilkishen is nice and calm too. Mark comments on the armistice of WWI.

01:33 Wayne announces the fact that Wayne and Mark went to Freenode last weekend, as well as the fact that the Binary Times is at its 49th Episode!

Mark goes on to speak about Freenode and mentions some of the highlight talks for him. The first he mentions is Doc Searle's and Simon Phipps' fascinating discussion around privacy and free and open source software, followed by John Sullivan's talk on free communications tools, Bradley Kuhn's interactive chat and VM Brasseur's closing keynote on four ways to spread the four freedoms. Wayne points out that all the talks are available at freenode.live. Mark wants people to take back their power and respect their freedom and privacy instead of putting up with their fur lined mousetraps, and governments need to protect the rights of their citizens. Wayne mentions Leah Rowes talk on Libreboot as a good talk.

25:10 Mark tells us in other news that he's replaced his HDD with an SSD and that he's been having some weird issues with the digital clock on his desktop panel.

29:35 Wayne tells us that he's upgraded all his machines to Ubuntu MATE 18.04. He's also upgraded a laptop of his with KDE Neon, though the experience with Discover left him cold (and he's CPU pretty hot if the fans were anything to go by!) and he's back on MATE. Mark tells us he's updated his Ubuntu Studio to 18.10.

31:55 Wayne moves the talk onto the Raspberry Pi TV Hat, a device that both the guys purchased. The guys discuss their experience with it. Wayne used tutorials on the Pi-Hut to help him stream TV to different places around the house. He's also streaming to his android devices using TVHGuide. To help set up kodi he installed kodipvrhts by typing sudo apt install kodi-pvr-hts on the command line. Wayne's next project is to save the recorded video to his NAS. Mark wants to use his TVHat as a DVR.

40:48 Wayne goes on to tell us that he installed Raspbian Stretch Lite on one of his Raspberry Pi Zero and his network wouldn't work. He found the problem was a typo. It was a tricky one to troubleshoot.

45:26 Under the Hood - Wayne's under the hood is a great one - df -h |grep /dev/sd. Mark adds to that by saying you could type df -h |grep -v loop to achieve the same thing.Wayne mentions YADM as a good dot file manager.

Mark's under the hood was going to be around Freenode and IRC and IRC clients, like Quassel and Konversation and IRSSI, hexchat and smuxi. The guys are thinking about having a IRC presence for the 50th episode of the Binary Times.

52:05 Irish saying of the podcast: "Suas Síos" or Up and Down. We hope you enjoyed the podcast as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 4 Episode 10

Sat 27th Oct, 2018

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Series 4 Episode 10 of the Binary Times. Bristol is bright and sunny, and Mark isn't sure what time zone he's in any more. At least the day is a good day to be alive in.

01:16 Wayne asks Mark what he's been up to for the last two weeks, and Mark tells us. First he tells us that he's sporting his new sweatshirt from Gabor and co at Hello Tux and loving it. He goes on to tell us that he has installed Elementary OS and he's really impressed (the release notes for Elementary OS 5 Juno can be found here). Mark notes the Libre Office suite isn't installed by default so the first thing he does is install it. Mark calls out Elementary's coding editor and the file manager for special mention. He goes on to say that after first impressions he would even consider using it on laptops and for the Coding Club. Mark then talks a bit further about the Coding Club.

09:12 Mark asks Wayne what he's been at. Wayne tells us he's been going bonkers with Linux the last two weeks he's been doing so many things. He first mentions the second annual Sonoj Convention that's on right now. What he really likes is the fact that it can be streamed live and downloaded later.

12:49 The next thing Wayne chats about is the Raspberry Pi TV hat. This opens all kinds of opportunities for working with TV streams. Mark tells us that he recently got a POE hat but is unsure of its utility, while Wayne mentions that you can get a GPIO extender. Wayne lets us know that there are tutorials available already for the Raspberry Pi TV hat.

17:35 Wayne and Mook talk about the Ubuntu user statistics.

22:58 Wayne tells us a bit of a convulted story about KVMs, 16.04, 18.04 and OS-Ticket. Please find the following as notes to get osticket working on Ubuntu 18.04:

OSTicket setup on 18.04

The php packages require the universe repositories, this can be enabled (know this is the universal repository and not maintained by Canonical)thus:

sudo add-apt-repository universe

You can get OSTicket from github

You can get Mariadb 10.3 from here.

You need to link the osticket.conf to nginx's default site using this command:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/conf.d/osticket.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default.

A fix for the 'Valid CRSF toke issue' can be found here.

A fix for the ajax white box issue can be found here.

Untested WHITE BOX issue fixes can be found here, here and here.

27:04 Wayne tried to get Office 365 working with Thunderbird without success. Speaking of failures, Mark mentions that he recently upgraded his Ubuntu Touch phone but the upgrade has left his phone fairly unresponsive and unusable unfortunately. Wayne brings the chat back to OSTicket and why he wants to use it and mentions Zim as an alternative. The guys talk about using OSTicket, documentation and retirement.

33:47 Wayne tells us he bravely did a do-release upgrade to his 16.04 box over SSH and the guys discuss all the new changes to 18.04.

39:20 Under The Hood - Mark tells us that there are GUI frontends for systemd. These include systemdgenie, systemd-kcm (superceded by systemdgenie), systemd system manager and systemd manager, as well as cockpit. Mark found this out with the help of Linux Magazine!

Wayne's first under the hood is a vim tip - Switching case of characters - Press "~" - if you keep pressing "~" it will switch case one character at a time. See this article for more. He goes on to say using the "." repeats commands. Wayne goes on to tell us to create a simple webpage for the current working directory over port 8000, use this command:

Python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Robert wrote in to inform us that this module seems to come standard in any installation of Python 2 but something to be aware of is that in many distros, the "python" command is symlinked to Python 3. Since Python 3 doesn't include this module in its standard library, you need to run "python2 -m SimpleHTTPServer" to use it.

46:06 Irish saying of the podcast - "Faigh do chóta agus cuir ort é" Get your coat and put it on!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 4 Episode 9

Sun 14th Oct, 2018

Timeline companion

00:25 Wayne welcomes us to Series 4 Episode 9 on this, the 13th October, 2018. It's beautiful, windy and cool in Bristol, and Mark tells us that he survived Storm Callum to tell the tale. Mark tells us that Extreme Weather can Extreme off for itself.

02:10 Wayne asks Mark what he's been up to and Mark tells us. Paper work has a tendency to boggle Mark's mind. Aside from that, Mark tells us to watch Mr.Robot Series 3. He also relates a cautionary tale regarding his use of simple-scan and not understanding the process that goes into scanning large amounts of documents. Mark tells us to festina lente, or hasten slowly.

10:43 Mark asks Wayne what he's been up to. Wayne tells us that he's continuing with his journey's through Linux audio; he's been using and donated to the zyn-fusion application, continuing to enjoy using the Carla plugin and he's been in contact with Unfa about an Ardour beginner's course, and Unfa is waiting for Ardour 6. Wayne is interested to see what Ardour 6 will be like. He goes on to say that he has upgraded to Nextcloud 14.0.3 and so far so good, he's happy with it, Nextcloud talk doesn't rev up his fans as much, it's bigger better faster stronger to paraphrase Daft Punk. Wayne is also impressed with the Nextcloud Security Scan checker. Mark and Wayne think that these features are important in staying secure.The guys agree that it's important to reach for an A+.

20:55 This leads the guys to talk about network cables, minimum lengths of network cables, and spark gap erosion proof connections (IEC-60512-99-001 standard).

27:42 This leads the conversation onto the benefits of WiFi6.

32:10 Wayne brings the conversation around to the Head First Humble Bundle. Mark got the bundle and discusses his first impressions. Both Wayne and Mark think this head first style of learning may be a good thing. If you're interested there's only two days left, so get it now! Wayne and Mark go onto discuss the Make Electronics 2018 bundle. Both of them are unsure if they will get this bundle though. Mark mentions there is a FabLab in Limerick.

40:22 Wayne tells us about the new sweatshirts available from Hello Tux. Mark tells us he's going to be wearing his Binary Times gear when they go to Freenode in a few weeks.

42:50 Wayne mentions a beginners guide to JACK that he found at the Libre Music Production website that's worth a look for anyone interested in learning more about JACK.

43:50 Under the Hood. Mark's Under the Hood is sudo apt remove [package-name] and sudo apt purge [package-name] to remove an application while leaving configuration files intact and to remove an application and all its associated files, respectively.

Wayne's under the hood is about the memory split on the raspberry pi.
To access the memory split functionality, from the console type
raspi-config -> Advanced -> Memory Split

47:53 Irish saying of the podcast: "Cad atá tú a déanamh idir na fiacla" or What are you making between the teeth!

We hope you enjoy the podcast as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 4 Episode 8

Sat 29th Sept, 2018

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne Welcomes us to Season 4 Episode 8 from a sunny Bristol. Mark tells us that the fog is lifting and the skies are blue and all is calm in Kilkishen. Another Amazing Day for podcasting. The weather gets the guys talking about what activities are good to do in certain weather and how all this is related to Linux.

04:08 Wayne asks Mark what he's been up to for the last two weeks. Mark tells us he's been busy, and then goes on to talk about the International Day against DRM and what happened around the world for IDAD. The guys have a discussion around DRM which also takes in IoT devices, what people take stands on and the use and acceptance of proprietary software.

17:27 Mark brings the topic of conversation around to the LibreOffice Conference 2018 held in Tirana, Albania, from September the 25th - 28th. Mark talks about the programme and in particular the advantages Open Document Formats, Open Source and Open Standards.

20:29 Mark asks Wayne what he's been up to, and it turns out that he's been working on audio on Linux. Wayne tells us that he uses Ubuntu MATE 16.04 with the KXStudio plugins, in particular Cadence and Carla and goes on to tell us about the advantages of using these. Wayne goes on to tell us that he did come across the Sonoj Festival in Cologne in his search for documentation and they have created some great video tutorials (on audio!)

29:47 Mark asks Wayne if he has come across any good documentation for networking and systemd and goes on to ask the listeners if they have any advice on good documentation. He also asks the audience if they have any ideas on replacing feedburner.

33:33 Under the Hood: Wayne starts off with a tip on Thunderbird email client and that is to compact your folders on a regular basis.

Mark follows on from this to chat about what the Mozilla foundation is doing under the hood. Mark also asks if any of the audience has any links they could point him at in order to better help him know what is going on in terms of open IoT and SCADA. The lads discuss IoT. Wayne is ok with sitting in the dark if it means not using a cloud app, Mark gets all huggy and wants to embrace IoT. They finish off the conversation with more chat about how wonderful Nextcloud is.

48:03 Irish saying of the podcast "Gheobhaidh mé bosca nua sópa" or I will get a new box of soap. The guys thank their listeners, and we hope you enjoy it as much as they do making it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 4 Episode 7

Sat 15th Sept, 2018

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Series 4, Episode 7 from a sunny, autumnal Bristol. He's enjoying the weather, it's good chicken weather! Mark greets us from an overcast, but calm Kilkishen. He fears that next week might be quite bad weather wise, watch this space, maybe retrospectively...

01:44 With the weather out of the way, Wayne asks Mark what he's been up to in his Little Linux Land for the last fortnight. Mark tells us that he upgraded his pihole to version 4 and after adding some extra blocklists saw his blocked traffic go from ~3% to ~44%, which he puts down to snapchat. He goes on to tell us that both his pi-hole and his main desktop PC both stopped working last night, the reason for which he hasn't figured out yet. Wayne reminds us that we're talking about all good things about Linux. Mark blames nVidia for its sucky stupid proprietary drivers. This leads the guys to have a bit of a 'production meeting' mid podcast to discuss the advantages of being Irish and [ab]using the English language. All feedback on this production meeting welcome!

07:50 Wayne tells us that he has updated dd-wrt on all his routers. The flirtation with Microtik's RouterOS is over after Ben, one of our contirbutor's, mentioned an article focusing on MikroTik router vulnerabilities. Wayne thanks the DD-WRT community for all their hard work over the years. Wayne checks some info to ensure his reporting accuracy, and the lads joke about their recent efforts to improve the podcast.

10:41 Wayne tells us he also updated his Nextcloud instance. This leads to a discussion around how good Nextcloud is and also the new features available in Nextcloud 14.

16:40 Wayne tells us of the fun he's had updating his servers to Ubuntu 18.04. Luckily he was prudent, he snapshotted his previous 16.04 server, and all is good. The guys discuss good sys admin practices, dabbling, and some meat and potatoes for good measure. Apologies to all the vegetarians out there!

19:12 Moving on from that, Wayne tells us that he upgraded his desktop to Ubuntu MATE 18.04. Wayne tells us he is using Lenovo's Display Link and that Adnan Hodzic's display link driver for Debian has proved immeasurably useful, thanks Adnan!

21:10 Wayne brings the conversation around to the latest Humble Bundles, ranging from UI/UX to Trivia to Smart homes / smart cities. The guys chat about a number of topics ranged around the ideas in these bundles.

29:50 In other stuff that Wayne has been doing, he's discovered that Piwik has become Matomo. This leads to more conversation around privacy and more production meeting type discussions! Mark mentions the Miro Guide as another way to promote the podcast. Mark refers back to Squid's point of providing information about open source technologies on proprietary platforms as a valid way to spread the free software message. It's a tough one to crack. Welcome to lucky bag podcasting! The guys invite everyone listening to join in on providing their views.

35:50 Wayne talks Audio on Linux, specifically JACK, and some brilliant tutorials that he has come across explaining how to use JACK.

38:02 Mark follows up on the current state of the EU copyright Directive by telling us that the EU Parliament voted to adopt its position on digital copyright rules. Mark follows this with his own take on all this malarky, and the guys have a discussion around this.

43:05 Mark follows on from all this with a mention of the International Day against DRM Mark also mentions the Defective by Design's DRM free guide to living.

47:00 Under the Hood - Mark's Under the Hood is a quick one on how to do networking right on a Raspberry Pi and that is edit dhcpcd.conf and nothing else.

Wayne's Under the Hood is to use the webpagetest.org website to test web page loading times.

48:25 Irish Saying of the Podcast - "Faoi mhóid bheith saor" - Sworn to be Free (ahem, apart from all the proprietary stuff, sorry!)

We hope you enjoyed the podcast as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 4 Episode 6
Paul Clyne chats with us

Sun 2nd Sept, 2018

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne introduces Series 4 Episode 6 of the Binary Times podcast from a slightly overcast but nice and mild Bristol. Mark joins us from an overcast, autumn definitely on the way, Kilkishen, while also introducing a new word "fantabalásach", a mish mash of Irish/English meaning awfully great. While Wayne loves Autumn and Spring, Mark implores us to embrace all of life's aspects. Wayne thinks this is weird.

01:19 Wayne asks Mark what he's been up to for the last two weeks. Mark tells us he's been busy with various things, one of those things being programming in Python (the book he's forgotten the name of is Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python). He's doing this along with Hugh, a regular attendee at the Ubuntu Hours in Ennis. He tells us that they are meeting up again next week to compare notes and is looking forward to that.

02:19 Mark goes on to tell us about some of his recent trials and tribulations with Steam and proprietary Nvidia drivers. He tells us first about Valve's latest initiative to bring Window's games to Linux via Steam Play and what needs to be done to enable Windows only games on Steam for Linux. To start you need to ensure you're participating in the Beta, you can check this by clicking on Steam, Account and checking to see if Beta participation is "Steam Beta update", if not click on the change button and choose Steam Beta Update from the drop down options. Once this is done (you'll need to restart if Steam Beta Update wasn't chosen), you need to click on Steam Play from the Steam Settings menu, and under advanced, check Enable Steam Play for all titles. All your windows games will now be available for install. Thanks to the Dublin Linux Group Telegram Channel for the tip. Mark goes on to tell us that games are freezing on him when he runs games, so he is planning on moving to the beta nvidia driver 396 provided by the graphics-drivers ppa, which Mark thinks may prove to provide exciting days ahead. Wayne offers the helpful advice that you can only fall over so many times before it becomes enough.

08:26 Wayne tells us that he's had a few weeks where he's finding it hard to look at the screen and so he hasn't been doing an awful lot. He tells us about an insight he got from his manager's reaction to Libre Office's splash screen about the importance of software looking good to make people want to use it. Wayne goes on to talk about how he runs the servers for the Binary Times and after a call out to our Telegram Channel looking for decent log file analysis software, Maurizio informed us of an application called lnav. Wayne tried it out as a snap first, found problems due to the containerized nature of snaps, so he installed the statically linked binary available from the website. Wayne goes on to discuss the limitations that snaps bring with them. He follows this with some of the handier keystrokes available in lnav - d to skip forward 24 hours, shift d, o will go to the next and previous day. Wayne suggests reading the documentation available on the lnav website for further information. Wayne is impressed with lnav and thanks Maurizio for the tip.

16:48 Mark brings the conversation back to Libre Office and the recent blogpost on the busy month Libre Office has had last August. The guys discuss this and licensing issues with other proprietary office suites. Mark mentions the Register article about 1/5 of IT spending in Britain is going to Microsoft. Wayne and Mark applaud Microsoft's business acumen.

21:02 Wayne introduces an interview that Mark did with Paul Clyne, a man who reclaims old disused PCs, refurbishes them and upgrades the operating system to Ubuntu MATE, before giving them away back into his community. An article about what he does can be found here. Well done Paul, keep up the great work!

Paul gives us our Aussie Saying of the podcast, which is "G'day, mate!", which translates as "Good day to you friend".

44:58 Under the Hood! Mark starts off with a simple one.To find out what the two characters mean at the start of the dpkg -l, type dpkg -l | head -3. Mark explains that head and tail are used to look at the start and end, respectively, of the output of a command.

48:04 Waynes under the hood is around GNS3, and it is a book on pfsense that he found which was produced by Netgate.

We hope you enjoyed the episode as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 4 Episode 5

Sat 18th Aug, 2018

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne welcomes us to Series 4 Episode 5 from a wet and muggy Bristol. Mark tells us it's a soft day in Kilkishen. Winter has finally arrived, fires and being lit, and the shop across the road from Mark has just installed an ice cream machine.

02:22 Wayne asks Mark what he's been at in his linux world for the last two weeks. Mark mentions the recent review the guys received on Linux Links inspired Mark to improve his audio set up. At first, Mark decided to go all hardcore and install Slackware and design his own digital studio with the help of Slackermedia. This was against Wayne's better judgement. Mark tells us it's been a long time since he installed Slackware, and the last slackware derivative distro he installed was Turbolinux (he remembered incorrectly, the distro he installed was VectorLinux 5.8 and he has the discs to prove it)! Things haven't changed much in the slackware world as LILO is still the bootloader and this and the amount of maunual setting up required prompted Mark to make an executive decision to drop Slackware for now and come back to it when he had more time, probably when he retires, though slackware might not be around then because of the 2038 bug. Mark installed Ubuntu Studio instead and concentrated on setting up his audio. Mark thanks the Ubuntu Studio development team for helping make all this possible.

08:10 Mark asks Wayne about his last two weeks with Linux. Wayne tells us that he has been spending more and more time with GNS3. He also tells us that he purchased a mikrotik router that comes with RouterOS. Wayne goes on to tell us that there is a Router OS image available for GNS3, with which he's been playing around with and having some fun. He's still struggling with whether he should be playing with pfSense or RouterOS, all comments and feedback welcome. Mark tells us that he's waiting for his Turris Mox.

16:15 Wayne has been looking into the differences between CAT5e, CAT6 and CAT6A. Each cable type basically allows you to carry more information further. He used an article from kit-communications for his information.

20:45 Wayne tells us how he saw an ad for NordVPN on prime time TV. This leads to a discussion around privacy and how privacy concerns are becoming more mainstream.

24:02 Wayne tells us about how coinhive malware has infected Mikrotik routers. This leads to a discussion around routers and patching, and the conclusion comes from the article: patch early and patch often

28:00 Wayne tells us that he's removed Kubuntu 18.04 from his Thinkpad X220 laptop and has returned to Ubuntu MATE 16.04. He's sticking with Ubuntu MATE 16.04 until end of life because it's so rock solid (you can check end of life by typing ubuntu-support-status at the command line). Wayne also mentions the linux links review as he will now endeavour to keep his pronouncements as accurate and up to date as possible. He was also really happy with the placing of the Binary Times in the Linux Links Linux Podcast Scene article.

33:47 Mark mentions that since upgrading to Kubuntu 18.04 he has noticed a problem with playing steam games in that they tend to crash more often. Since he's talking about Steam he mentions the news that Valve seems to be working on tools to get Windows games working on Linux. This brings the conversation around to whether having proprietary applications on free platforms is a good idea, before Mark quickly mentions that the "Respects Your Freedom" certification programme continues to grow. He also mentions that the FSF is looking for a Business Operations Manager. Wayne bought his X220 in the belief that libreboot would some day be available for it. Mark goes on to mention an article they both read on how open source has failed and how free and open source software is being used to concentrate wealth through corporations use of it and abuse of software patents and copyright law. Mark finishes this piece with a mention of Defective by Design's IDAD 2018 - A Day Without DRM, coming up on 18 September 2018.

40:03 This podcast is dedicated to celebrating Debian turning 25 !

40:50 Under the Hood: Wayne harps back to Ubuntu MATE for his Under the Hood. To reclaim some desktop realestate, he removed the word 'menu' from the top bar and also removed the date. He did this by opening a terminal and typing the following:

gsettings set com.solus-project.brisk-menu label-visible false.

To remove the date, right click on the time, then click preferences, then uncheck 'show the date'.

Mark's starts his Under the Hood with something that is not an under the hood but an interesting read: Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning was the Command Line". His Under the Hood is from Debian's manual: "commands for reading documentation". The three commands he gives are:

man [section-number] subject - a crucial command for helping you to learn how to use it and other Linux commands.

info [subject] - provides hypertext like documentation in that you can jump around the documentation by following links in the text.

help [subject] - provides on-line help about bash's built in commands.

47:57 Irish Saying of the Podcast: Saol fada chugat, Debian, or long life to you, Debian.

We hope you enjoyed this episode as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 4 Episode 4

Sat 4th Aug, 2018

Timeline companion

00:24 Series 4 Episode 4 starts with Wayne regaling us from a wet and windy Bristol, his spirits have lifted as the wind blows through his hair and the rain saturates him from head to toe. Mark is concerned that Wayne is experiencing that amount of weather while recording in his house though Wayne assures us that he is doing an outside broadcast. Mark goes on to tell us that the rain has returned to Kilkishen. The guys go on to discuss their differences in opinion on the weather.

02:04 Wayne asks Mark what he has been doing for the last while, and Mark tells us that the Kilkishen Coding Club took place with two families turning up despite the Clare / Galway Hurling match taking place at the same time. Everyone there had a good time coding in Scratch and some web design. Mark thanks the Kilkishen Parent's Association for kindly renting the cultural centre for the time to allow the event to take place.

12:36 Mark's other Linuxy news is related to setting up laptops and servers for the Kilkishen Coding Club, and he tells us how he found Ubuntu Server 18.04 too different from 16.04 to allow him to be productive quickly so he reverted to using 16.04. This leads to a discussion around the differences between Ubuntu server 16.04 and 18.04.

19:51 Wayne tells us what he's been up to. He finally started to work on his X220 Thinkpad laptop. He's installed Kubuntu 18.04 on it and is trying to take on the "K" suite of software. This provokes a discussion around embracing change and differences in desktop environments. Wayne tells us he really likes Kubuntu though it's not on his main machine and that Ubuntu MATE is still his favourite.

29:17 Wayne tells us a story about change and upgrades. He recently upgraded a kernel from 4.4 to 4.15 and hit a problem with wireless drivers. He found his solultion in the last post to a thread he found on the Ubuntu Forums.

30:43 Wayne decides to change topic completely and talk about his Cisco CCNA and his recent purchase of a microtik router and Microtik's RouterOS. This leads him around to talking about GNS3, a Graphical Network Simulator that does what it says on the tin. The guys recommend GNS3 as something to have a bit of fun with.

39:40 Mark talks about some listener feedback. Tom wrote in to suggest a linuxbabe article on how to install skype. This lead Mark to think about doing a segment on installing "essential" proprietary applications. In the meantime, Martin Wimpress wrote a blog post on snapcraft.io detailing how to get productive on the Linux desktop with 7 essential snap apps. Mark goes on to tell us about the apps and how to snap install them.

45:20 Some more listener feedback, and this one is from Old Nerd on our Telegram group, detailing 4 simple steps to clean your Ubuntu System. This leads nicely into Under the Hood.

46:11 Under the Hood - Mark's under the hood is cleaning your apt cache. You do this by first checking the size, and you do that by typing:

du -sh /var/cache/apt/archives

If it is large, you can clean it out by typing the following:

sudo apt-get clean

47:38 Wayne talks about the ip route 2 suite of commands.

ip route - show the ip routing table

ip ad - show the ip address assigned to interfaces

ip ad sh eth0 - show the ip address assigned to ethernet0

sudo ip link set eth0 down - take down eth0

sudo ip link set eth0 up - bring back up eth0

50:40 Wayne thanks all our patrons and donors, most recently Squid from the Open Source Community on Steam

51:25 Irish Saying of the podcast - "Tá sé anna fluich", or it is very wet.

Thanks for listening, we hope you enjoyed the podcast as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 4 Episode 3
Ben Klaasen chats with us.

Sat 21st Jul, 2018

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne introduces Series 4 Episode 3 from another hot Bristol day. Wayne goes on to introduce Ben Klaaser, an avid walker and Linux enthusiast. Ben uses Linux both at home and at work. He is a software tester for the Irish Independent. Last year Ben walked from Dublin to Istanbul.

14:07 We knuckle down to chat about Linux, Ben informs us that he uses Xubuntu, a simple interface that keeps out of the way. He also chats about other Linux distros.

15:40 Laptops all over the place in 2018, do many people use desktops these days?

17:54 Wayne speaks about synapse the tool he uses on Ubuntu MATE 16.04, he likes using it as it searches applications and documents all in one tool.

19:03 "The lovely silvery boxes", Wayne is running Manjaro on his Dell Inspiron 1501 laptops at work. It works really well as it is a fairly lightweight solution.

20:22 Wayne updates us on his progress with his HP Proliant ML110 and has managed to get the extra SATA ports for optical media working by changing the port type on the BIOS to 'Auto'

23:02 Maurizio's tips on LVM, Wayne chats about mirroring drives on LVM and LVM is smart enough to know to put the mirrored volume on a separte physical volume. More on this here from LinOxide.

25:25 Ben chats about mhddfs. A FUSE filesystem to join several filesystems together to form a larger one.

26:55 Wayne speaks about connecting to his Raspberry Pi using a USB UART cable. I purchased a uart cable which is just a usb connector on one end and a red (pin 2), black (pin6), white (pin 8) and green (pin 10) on your raspberry pi.

Starting from a clean Raspbian installation:

1. Use raspi-config to enable the serial port (or add enable_uart=1 to config.txt) and reboot.
2. sudo apt-get install screen
3. Connect the three wires of the RS232 adaptor to pins 6, 8 and 10 of the Pi's header, and plug the USB plug into a free port on the Pi.
4. screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

29:45 Here is a good link to the Ubuntu Server PDF download.

33:25 Check out the free Python 3 ebook on digital ocean.

39:20 Under the hood from Ben
ccze command colorizes log files

41:05 Ben chats about the benefits of regular expressions.

41:49 Leah Verou's 40 minute presentation on regular expressions
The regluar expression playground can be found here.

43:15 Check what packages are installed on your Ubuntu\Debian system
apt list --installed

46:06 Amazing Linux Humble Bundle offering - check it out.

47:33 Irish saying of the fortnight
Tá mé go hiontach - I am wonderful.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 4 Episode 2
Maurizio chats with us.

Sat 7 Jul, 2018

Timeline companion

00:24 Wayne introduces Series 4 Episode 2 from a hot and sweaty Bristol. Mark's enjoying the pleasant change. Wayne goes on to introduce Maurizio Porrato, a listener of the podcast who's quite the expert with LVM. A conversation ensues around Maurizio's Linux experience, how best to use LVM and some chat about various distributions. Maurizio recommends the CentOS documentation on LVM as well as the man pages for more information on using LVM.

19:00 Wayne asks Mark what he's been up to and Mark goes on to say that he's been working to try to get a web site together for the upcoming Kilkishen's Coder Club using W3.CSS templates. Both Mark and Wayne talk about the usefulness of the w3schools website and Wayne goes on to read out what is W3.CSS. Wayne provides a link to W3 Schools and You Tube for further information.

25:54 The guys announce the winner of the competition, Ben Klaasen. We hope you enjoy your Binary Times T-Shirt from Hello Tux, wear it with pride!

27:42 Wayne tells us about his adventures with cockpit, a server manager that makes it easy to administer your GNU/Linx servers via a web browser.

31:07 Wayne talks about the recent experience he's had with sweethome3d and both Wayne and Mark praise the software for its ease of use. Mark, never being known to have big ambitious daydreams, goes on to tell us that he wants to model his house and in fact his entire village in Blender.

35:22 Mark tells us that the vote on the Copyright Directive in the EU Parliament did not pass and will have to go back for further review in the parliament in September.

36:50 Under the Hood - Mark has a really fantastic Under the Hood - snap install xonotic, xonotic being a fantastic, fast paced shooter that is also free and open source and has also recently been snapped by those wonderful snappy people.

39:09 Wayne's under the hood is with regards to vifm, a file manager with curses interface which provides a Vi like environment. Wayne likens it to Midnight Commander but with Vi key bindings. Some useful commands available in vifm are as follows:

P - Paste / Put the files into the selected pane without going through the trash

C - clone a file (makes a copy of it and adds a number after it)

Mark puts on his best worbly Oirish accent so no one will understand to deliver the Irish Podcast of the saying: "Bí cinnte agus do lón ar fad a ithe inniu" or Be sure to eat all your lunch today! Congratulations once more to Ben winning the t-shirt, thanks to Maurizio for joining us today and thanks for listening, we hope you enjoy the show as much as we did making it!

 

 

 

 

 

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The Binary Times - Series 4 Episode 1

Sat 23 Jun, 2018

Timeline companion

00:25 Wayne welcomes us to Series 4, yes that's right, Series 4! Whiskey Blue Skies predominate the weather report, with streams of weather producing highs at the height of Summer to help the guys reach new heights!

02:20 Mark announces the new collaboration between the Open-Source Community on Steam and the Binary Times. Wayne welcomes all the new Open-Source Community listeners to the podcast and also warns new listeners of possible down time

04:04 Mark tells us of the ups and downs he's had in his journey to create the perfect Binary Times t-shirt. He recently contacted Hello Tux, a family business that believes in promoting free and open source software, asking them if they would be willing to create a t-shirt for the Binary Times. They enthusiastically agreed and went about creating clothing based on Mark's designs. Mark received the first of the t-shirts, a black and a white t-shirt and a red carry bag earlier in the week, and is well impressed at the quality.

Hello Tux have also gratiously agreed to provide a t-shirt, which can be shipped internationally, as a competition prize. Mark gives out the competition question in the podcast, make sure to email info@thebinarytimes.net with your answer before the 7th July 2018 to be in with a chance to win!

Thanks once again to Hello Tux for their generosity, open spirit, and promotion of free and open source software communities.

11:33 Wayne tells us about his last two weeks of linux admin bits and pieces. This includes updating his routers (the cause of some of the down time on the web site recently) and looking into his back up situation at home. LVM didn't work out for him as a simple home back up system, so he went with 2x2TB drives and rsync. He wonders if he's missing something with LVM and asks for any feedback. Mark speaks about his own back up home server back up regime in the informative way that Mark does. The guys chat about the pros and cons of zfs.

27:32 Wayne tells us about how he upgraded his partners SSDs and changing UUIDs.

29:38 Mark talks about the proposed European Copyright Directive and how it has moved one step closer to destroying the internet. Mark pleas with the listeners to SAVE YOUR INTERNET! by contacting their MEPs before the vote in July. Wayne tells us of some recent problems with content filtering. The conversation continues onto the GDPR and other implications of Copyright Directive.

41:53 Wayne brings back the conversation to Linux with a chat about Manjaro. He got the broadcom wifi working on an old Dell laptop by doing the folowing:

Go into the Hardware Configuration in the Manjaro Settings Manager, right click on BCM4311 adaptor and choose 'Remove', then open a terminal and type:

sudo modprobe b43

To make this solution permanent Wayne followed the guide in Ask Ubuntu to set up a systemd script. He also had to install an extra program called yaourt to install freerdp for Remmina, as shown following:

sudo pacman-mirrors -g

sudo pacman -Syyu

sudo pacman -S yaourt

Wayne knows he's put more time into these laptops than they deserve but he likes to keep old hardware alive and likes Manjaro.

47:29 Mark mentions Chakra Linux as another arch like distribution and tells us that Chakra had a large upgrade to a number of important packages including linux, graphics, audio and the like. Mark commends Chakra Linux and is glad to see it thriving.

49:05 Wayne talks about Copperhead OS and the recent problems the project has been having. He thinks he'll change to Lineage.

51:15 Mark drags out the podcast by talking about Will Cookes blog post on a first look at Ubuntu desktop metrics.

53:37 Wayne drags out the podcast a little more by having a discussion on the latest cyber-security bundle from the Humble Bundle. Mark is initially skeptical but seems convinced of the value of the bundle by the end of their chat.

57:17 Under the Hood - Mark tells us that you can login to snap using your Ubuntu single sign on account and that will provide you with the authorization you need to install / refresh etc. snaps without using sudo. More info can be found on the advanced snap tutorial.

1:01:45 Wayne's Under the Hood is certbot delete to delete old certificates from his Lets Encrypt directory.

1:03:03 Irish Saying of the Podcast: 'Beidh me Arais' or I'll be back. Mark comes back with 'Beidh biseach ort go luath' or you'll be better soon.

We hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did making it!

Series Four the Vague and Vacant Series