Becoming a Linux Podcaster - mintCast

In October last year I joined the podcast team of the mintCast podcast. This podcast is now over 10 years old and has released over 300 episodes in that time.

The work in putting a podcast out even on a bi-weekly schedule for that length of time is imminence and not surprisingly the podcast has had numerous hosts during its 10 years.

Towards the end of 2018 Rob and Isaac the then hosts decided it was time to hang up the microphone in favour

Nokia 6 phone - first thoughts

I decided that I needed to update my Android device a couple of weeks ago. After a little research I decided on the Nokia 6 phone. Before you say, 'but this is a Linux Blog' for those of you that might not be technical, Android is based on the Linux Kernel so I think its a valid topic.

This is a mid range phone with the following specifications:

5.5-inch 1080p screen
Snapdragon 430 chip set

Running Raspbian Pixel on a P4 Tower PC

Well I’m back again, as I said in the post I did about Raspbian x86 on the Lenovo x61s I was interested to see how the OS would perform on what I now class as very old hardware in the form of a Pentium 4 tower.

We have a spare tower at the Makerspace which gets used to test low resource operating systems to see if they live up to there name, so on Saturday (yesterday as I write this,

Blackpool Linux User Group Update - We are now a Makerspace as well.

I had forgotten that I had made a post about our LUG in 2012 until I was reviewing my stats on site visits, and someone had viewed this post. Things have changed considerably since that post so here is an update.

These are the new details of what is now a Makerspace and LUG in Blackpool UK

About

Blackpool Makerspace + LUG

The Basement, Crossways Hotel, 64 Tyldesley Road, Blackpool. FY1 5DF

Blackpool Makerspace was founded by members of Blackpool Linux User Group, and was previously known as MakerspaceFY1.
Combined meetings of the LUG and Makerspace take place every Saturday at 10 am, unless otherwise stated on the mailing list.  

https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/blackpool

Distro Review - Raspbian Pixle x86

This post is about putting the new Raspbian image onto one of the Lenovo x61s laptops that I have previously talked about.

These laptops do not have a DVD drive so normally I would create a boot flash drive using USB image writer in Linux Mint, but I had received a DVD of Raspbian with the MagPi magazine so I connected a portable USB DVD drive that I have and used the disc to install to the laptop.

On booting to the DVD drive you get several options including a live session with persistence (this allows the saving of data and system changes to a flash drive during the session if wanted), but the option I chose was to install to hard drive.

MX Linux

MX Linux OS

These are the show notes about MX Linux that I did along side a podcast I have posted on the HPR (Hacker Public Radio) http://hackerpublicradio.org/calendar.php to be released on Friday 19^th May 2017. 

 

I’ve recently done shows on current Linux distro’s that are suitable for older hardware but with a modern look and feel and fully featured with the latest software available.

As you have probably gathered by now if you have listened to my other shows I am a big fan of older Lenovo Laptops. My main Lenovo is an X230i i3 with a 2.5G cpu and 8Gig of Ram and a 120Gig SSD,

Used Laptop Lenovo X61s

I currently record podcasts for Hacker Public Radio a daily community podcast. I recently did a show to be released in the RSS feed on 28th April Ep2280 about using the Lenovo X61s Laptop as a cheap second laptop or child's homework PC.

This is an edited version of the show notes from that episode.

Laptop was bought at auction and cost:

• Cost £36 including auction fees
• OS Free (any Linux will work well) finally used Linux lite
• Upgrade to 120Gig SSD £40 of ebay
• New 77wh Battery £16 
• Total outlay £92