Episode 008 - A mintCast special
What do you get when you get when you put a hand full of people in front of a microphone every fortnight, who enjoy Linux Mint?
Introducing mintCast , a collection of individuals from all walks of life, with a common passion for technology, Linux and generally geeking out. mintCast is a long running podcast. It started out with Rob and Isaac who carried the touch for 300 ish Episodes before passing it on to the current hosts.
Before we introduce the fresh faces of the mintCast crew , I would like to thank them for making me feel part of the crew with their amazing community they have out together over on Telegram and Discord which I highly advice you pop in and say “Hi” yourself.
So as you may or may not know, I haven’t been using Linux long, but I use Linux Mint, and have done since I started my journey. I then started listening to podcasts and mintCast came on my radar and I have a new community to be a part of.
I started with some feedback to Leo about the show which he was very happy to get, the more I got talking to the lot of them the more I got involved in helping promote this amazing little community, they eventually invited me to come on the show, I made an appearance in mintCast – 312, and it was an awesome experience. So after the show I interviewed they guys ( basically asked them a bunch of questions on a Google Doc to which they answered ). Thanks guys 👍.
So on to the hosts, they currently are:
- Leo
- Moss
- Bo
- Josh
- Tony H
- Tony W
- Joe B
So Leo, the first voice you generally hear when the podcast starts , an enthusiastic presenter of the show, keen on IT security and loves himself some Linux Mint.
The fun loving, musically talented, distro hopping Moss, also The Chief Bard of Triad Bardic College.
Josh, the youngest of the bunch and been labelled in the UK as “Young Coder of the year” at the Future Talent Awards which was sponsored by ARM. Who was also given the BT’s Young Pioneer Award.
Tony H, a retired nurse from the North West England, loves his tech although not being an IT professional, but a keen podcaster who contributes to Hacker Public Radio (HPR) and also podcasts with Moss as they talk about their DistroHopping fun.
Tony W, guitar and technology are his passions and does a good job at presenting mintCast too, he also enjoys helping people who don’t have a lot to spend on computers.
Joe B, podcaster of multiple shows, the fixer of things, buying what appear to be broken Bluetooth headphones and fixing them up.
I asked the guys:
“What got you into Linux?“
Leo:
A devious instructor that knew I was looking for a challenge. Can’t remember the version, but around 2002, he handed me a copy of Slackware on disc. With a little prodding from him, mostly in the fdisk area, I got it working after a couple of days of fiddling.
Moss:
Curiosity and a growing hatred of being told what to do by Microsoft. At least half the new versions of Windows were horrible, so we sure couldn’t trust THEM to make a better environment. At that time, however, Linux wasn’t much more than a curiosity, a future prospect.
Tony H:
I started to Refurbish old computer hardware around 2006/7 and give it away on Freecycle (Freegle in UK) and to keep everything legal I was using Xubuntu as the OS as many of the machines had no Windows licence and it would not have been fesable to buy one for each machine. As it happened I realised that Linux was working better than Windows XP on the resources the PC’s had, max 256Mb RAM and Pentium 2/3 CPU’s. As a result I installed a Dual boot of Ubuntu to my P4 PC with 2Gig of Ram and it was fantastic.
Joe:
I needed something to run that wasn’t windows. Also i was getting into the industry and decided that the best way to learn was through immersion
“What do you love most about linux?“
Leo:
That it is a living, breathing version of Hacker Culture; something I had identified with for a very long time. You were free to take, install, modify and just plain “hack” everything. The “free as in freedom and free as in beer” saying never really meant much to me until I realized that it was really a phrase that tried to capture the essence of what hacker culture is. Then, as time to theme and modify got shorter, I started using Linux to get work done. Now, I’m on Linux full-time outside of gaming, and more and more, for gaming, too!
Moss:
The ability to decide for myself how much of my data gets used where, and the freedom to choose desktops that do different things in different ways.
Tony H:
For me it is about being able to reuse older hardware and have it still relivent many years after it would be considered end of life, I have hardware that is 15 years old that will still work on Linux that would be an awfull experience with Windows.
Joe:
Actually being able to get involved as a non developer and dig into all the the things that interest.
Then I asked a bit of a tough one, ”
You guys don’t monetize where a lot of others (Podcasts) do? why is that?“
Leo:
Free as in freedom, and free as in beer. Hacker Culture. What’s an open source operating system without people that believe in open source at its core? At least at the moment, I don’t feel like slapping beginners in the face with ads is a good move. Sponsorships? Maybe. Not ads. But really, that’s up to the team as a whole, and we’re just not on board yet, if ever.
Moss:
We don’t have expenses, except for tiny ones that someone on the team steps up and covers. We are also having a lot of fun, and we’re not sure that turning it into a business would allow us to keep that feeling. Eventually, each of us has the right to move off, and there is no set number of “staff positions” to fill — when we got into this, there were just two.
Tony H:
Personally I think we should encourage others to support the projects that make mintCast possible such as Audacity, Mumble, Archive.org and the Mint developers. So far the Show hasn’t cost me any money that I wouldn’t have spent for my hobby anyway so why ask the community to pay me when I don’t need it.
The other reason is a little more practical, as soon as you moniterise it you start having to deal with all the issues that go with taking money, not least the tax man. So in my opinion, the longer we can go without taking cash the better.
And obviously the most important question
“What’s your favourite Distro/DE ( Desktop Environment)?”
Leo:
Linux Mint Cinnamon all day long
Tony H:
Linux Mint MATE
Moss:
I use Linux Mint when I need to get things done and don’t have time to worry about how to do it. I run Bodhi when I want more fun while I’m doing it. And I love trying out distros, although it seems almost everything I wind up liking, with very few exceptions, is Ubuntu-based. Moksha. MATE when I need it to just work. But Moksha should continue to get more stable. Budgie has its good moments, but the file manager needs work and Tilix is having a management crisis.
So if you like the sound of these guys and fancy a listen go to mintCast website and catch the latest episode , search for mintCast in your podcatcher and join in on the live shows on YouTube .
UPDATE: shows are now every week as a podcast and live every other week.