hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0986.txt

Episode: 986
Title: HPR0986: LFNW: Interview with Scott Newlon of MintCast
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0986/hpr0986.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 17:00:50

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Okay, hello, this is David, I'm talking to Scott Newton.
Is that right?
I'm actually Newland.
Newland from Mintcast, and he's here at Linux Fest North West.
So how's it going, Scott?
It's going great.
It's been a great couple of days here.
So he's wearing an Ice Mintcast T-shirt that he talked about on the Last Mintcast.
Where they talked about Linux Fest North West.
He didn't have my size, so I'll let him give that to someone else.
So you're here today, you've been in the area, in the Oregon area, then, and came up just
to be with at the Fest this weekend, huh?
Yeah, I worked out really well that, you know, usually I'm based out of Northwest Montana,
and I had to come over for work in the Oregon area, and that ended on Friday, and I had a
chance to just hop in a car and drive on up, a little bit of a drive to get from Midway
Oregon about a UD area all the way up to the Northern corner of Washington State, but
definitely worth it.
And after being here last year, I felt like it was something that I wanted to come back
to, wanted to have, you know, I really had a great time last year, and it was, for me,
it was the first Linux Fest that I had been to.
So being able to come back this year and come much better idea of what to expect in
the different sessions that I wanted to get to was not going to miss it.
That's for sure.
Okay, and what sessions have you attended while you're here?
Let's see, I just came from the hands-on Android development session, which was great.
It was three college students out of Northwestern, talked about some apps that they put together,
had a slideshow, talked a little bit about Android development, obviously, in a 50 minute
session, you're not going to learn how to develop Android, but definitely gave people
a start on it, and feel that some great questions from the people who are there.
Like all the sessions I've been to, this was standing room only, it's really something
that I did not see last year, but I'm seeing every session I've been to this year is the
classrooms are full, and there's, I say, it's standing room only.
So that type of stuff is great.
Let's see, I went to Brian Lunduk, who does the Linux Action Show, gives a Y Linux Sucks
conference in our talk, and he's done this at the conference, I think, for four years
running.
And went to that yesterday, and that was standing room only to the point where they had
to ask 15 people to leave the room, because they were afraid the fire marshal was going
to come in and shut them down.
So quite a few people in there, and Brian did a good job, walked through some of the reasons
why, you know, some of the challenges that we, Linux users have seen for years, some
of them gotten better, some of them gotten worse, and the, in fact, I think that's posted
online on YouTube, and if you are a Google plus user, you can probably find it if you look
at Brian Lunduk's stream out there.
Okay, Brian came by the HPR booth and said, thanks for being here too, so all the HPR
listeners.
Probably familiar with Brian and Chris, and Linux Action Show.
And he said hello anyhow, and so thank you, Brian.
Yeah, yeah, I was, and he actually, and the, and the heels of the Y Linux Sucks, he gave
a, his next talk was Y Linux is great.
And I actually went off to another, to a mint related, there was a Linux made easy presentation
where they were using, they were doing a live install of Linux and walking people through
and they were offering, if people wanted to, they had laptops, they wanted to mint installed
right there, have Linux installed, or you could do it in a virtual box.
And so I actually did not attend Brian's second conference.
I'm going to check out the video because it is up on, on YouTube and Google Plus.
But that session was, again, centered around Mint, the gentleman walked people through.
And it was very interesting and very enlightening for me because my thought coming in here was
that most people at a Linux conference would be familiar with Linux.
In that classroom, there were a number of people who would seem like they had an inkling
of what Linux was, but not really a great understanding.
And so they were really sort of newbie beginner questions.
And it really opened my eyes to the, the fact that there's, there's room for that type
of presentation at a Linux conference so that people who are new to it don't have to
feel like a lot of, a lot of the sessions here are what you would consider sort of 200, 300
level.
You know, if you're in college, you know, you're 201, 301, a few 100 level sessions.
But even those with people who weren't familiar with Linux might feel it was over their head.
They might walk in.
And after 15 minutes, it feels totally lost.
And this session they was putting on gave people an opportunity to ask those questions,
those newbie questions.
And really gave me, gave me pause and maybe think that, you know, potentially it's something
that myself or somebody else would want to do next year, a very similar type of session.
Maybe structured a little bit differently, but offer to newbies to get them, you know,
to bridge that gap from being somebody who has heard about Linux and is interested in
it to somebody who actually hasn't installed somewhere and can use it, can, can experiment
with it and see if it's something that that's for them.
I don't want to cut in here really, but the, there's a tutorial that is here and I had
one experience with this.
One guy came by the HPR booth and he wanted to get a boot all on his laptop and he had
it with him in his bag and so I took him in there.
I tried to steer him toward Linux Mint since that's what I use.
I know a lot of the HPR guys to say, well, I didn't go for arch Linux or slack wear,
but, you know, I didn't and then so I said, this fellow wants to get a, Mint installed
on his piece and he said, no, he wanted to get a boot and so a young guy, high school
kid, took him there and just a few minutes later he came by and he had, he had a dual boot
process installed on his laptop, so it was a big success.
Yeah, and that's, you know, I'm glad you brought that point up because the tutorial that
they have here, that's a great place and actually I need to make it by there.
Last year when I came, I just went to sessions, never made it to the game den, never made
it to the robotics, never made it to the tutorial and this year I've made it over to the game
den and the game den, I walked in and I felt like I was at a LAN party and I don't know
Dave, you do LAN parties, I've done LAN parties in the past, I've talked about them on
the podcast, they're a lot of fun, but this felt like a LAN party walking in there, they're
people going, oh, you just fragged me or, you know, these types of things, but I need
to get over to the tutorial and I think, you know, having that here, I think that the
people here at Linux Fest Northwest do a great job in terms of all the different activities
that they offer and the way it's spread out, I mean, it talked about the fact that it
was standing room only in a lot of these sessions, but there are a lot of people here and
they're spread out over this campus in a lot of different places I had heard yesterday's
numbers were approaching 800 registered news, registered attendees, I know more people
have registered today and so when you think about the fact that there's, you know, 1,200
people have been wandering around here at any given time, the fact that, you know, you're
not clogged and bumping into people, really speaks to how they set this conference up
and the great job that the people at the Bellingham Linux users group and here at Bellingham
Technical College do. Okay, and did you go to the Valdita tablet session? Yes, the Vivaldi
yes. Vivaldi, okay. Yes, that's the KDE tablet that Aaron Saigo is working, doing the
Omen's work and trying to bring to market. It was a great session, it was actually one
of the extended sessions so it went on for almost two hours. Aaron Saigo actually came
in via Skype and gave a presentation he's based in Zurich so Miracle of Technology, he
was able to present a, give a presentation to the people in the room to talk about the
Vivaldi and what direction they want to go and why there is a space for this tablet and
what people would consider a fairly crowded marketplace now with Android and Apple devices
out there sort of dominating the tablet market and I was really impressed with the presentation
and what they're trying to do and originally I thought, you know, I have a tab, I have
a couple of Android tablets actually that I play with and I wasn't going to look at
up a Vivaldi tablet but after sitting in that presentation I felt that really what they're
trying to do in the direction they're going is very compelling and it really, there's
a place for it and I'm actually, I was trying to find out ordering information and when
I could go ahead and order and just for the listeners who might be interested, eat,
play, live, no work, play, live, work, play, live, okay, yeah, just dot com is the place
to go if you want it, ordering information it's not available yet but it will be very
shortly, sounds like within the next month it should be ordering up on there so that you
can get one if you want. So just for information I understand from talking to Carl Simmons that
the delay in the tablet coming to market is because there was a difference back that
came down as that you're understanding. Well, my understanding in what Aaron Saigo said
yesterday was that they actually were able to sort of move up the food chain in terms
of ordering originally when they were looking at this hardware they had to go through OEMs
to actually procure the hardware and they actually met with the CEO of the company that
actually builds the hardware that's coming called Zenithink and they met with him somewhere
in Europe and he actually they were able to negotiate an agreement where they're going
to be dealing directly with this main factor. So in essence they've moved, they've cut
a couple of a couple of middlemen out but in order to do that they had to change some of
the some of the contracts and agreements that they had in place and that's delayed things
and I think there was, as you said, I think there was some changes in the actual spec of
the device that is going to be finally coming to market. So it kind of, it did delay it.
I think, you know, if the listeners have been following the Raspberry Pi sort of processes
that's gone through to get to market, understand these are very complicated and bringing anything
to market is a very tricky and convoluted process and has a lot of pitfalls in it and
I think that these two projects are working their way through them. We need to be patient
and you know, waiting for them. I think you and I spoke yesterday and said the real proof
in this and devolved the in Raspberry Pi is to actually see those things in the wild, see
them in people's hands. So I'm really excited for that. It sounds like they're very close.
Yes, and I think that the thing that I'm excited about about the tablet is the open nature
of it rather than having, I know Android is supposed to be, you know, based on the Linux
kernel, but let's face it, it's locked up and so is the iOS platform. So to have this KDE
active plasma that's going to be open and be able to be developed by you and I if we want to
take the time to learn language and get in there and hack that I think is wonderful and I hope
it's successful and it does change the marketplace because I think there's a lot of applications
where that can be used and tablets seem to be popular and I tend to want to use a netbook
myself but I might be convinced when I actually I'm going to buy one when they're available to use
it and play with it and then and I will not spend my money on an iOS or Android tablet device right
now but I'm waiting for this and this is what I've been waiting for it. I think if you're someone
who has used KDE and has looked at the activities piece of KDE the tablet is the platform where
activities really come to life where they really shine they demonstrated this yesterday during the
presentation where tablet has the ability to say your activities you have different activities
like you're going to take a trip or you're a student in a class or you've got a presentation
that you're going to be putting on for work and that becomes an activity and you create almost
like a home screen for people who have Android devices and are familiar with this terminology
for that particular function so for your trip you create a home screen and on there you have a map
of where you're going and you have the weather forecast and you have your itinerary you have your
flights and your hotel and all that stuff and you have some links on there now the device knows
where you are it knows it knows some things around there it knows it can it can do stuff for you
it can bring to the four restaurants in your area it's coming up around you know it knows what time
it is it's five o'clock you know perhaps it can do things along and this is sort of the way that
they're evolving the device they actually brought an example to say if you're in a in your in
Seattle and you want to go from West Seattle to the university district you the device knows you're
in West Seattle it also knows because the information is there it knows the bus routes and it can tell
you very quickly that you need to get bus 51 to downtown and then make a change at West Lake to get
out there through the U District you know it can do all these things like have all the information
for you and this is sort of the direction they want to take it in but as we talked about different
activities now you go to your presentation activity and you you actually go to that screen and all
you see on that screen is the things around your presentation and so to my mind it was really this
is this is the vision they had for activities when they made it for the desktop because for me I
always struggled activity seemed like more virtual desktops that you see in other like a no more
virtual desktops activities struck me that way but really in looking at it on the tablet I really
realize now the vision that's behind activities and I think this is where the where that tablet is
really going to shine and people are really going to appreciate it yeah what was else was really
exciting to you about the fast here or something that really stood out I thought how about the race
car booth race car booth is awesome I you know I like that's with Pogo Linux Pogo Linux that's
really something it's got it's forced feedback taken to the extreme you basically sit in a chair
the chairs on shocks you've got a steering wheel you're sitting in a racing car seat it's a
three screen set up there I don't know they're 42 inch screens and so it's sort of surround you
really something it there's always a line for it I have not done it myself probably won't while
I'm here just because there is always a line and but it's really something to see and my
understanding is it stays in that guy's living room when when it's not when he's not traveling and
showing it off in different places so we were saying either he's got a very understanding
wafer he's not married yeah so did you see the server that was the mobile server you know I've
walked by and I haven't seen it what what what what is that well it's a it's a server rack that
is has its own cooling and it has a propulsion system to be able to move it from place to place and
so I've got some information on it and going to look at it a little closer but it's really look
cool it had lights to guide it by and that and it was it was pretty good size I'm going to say
I'm two and a half feet wide three feet tall and four feet long and they have different versions
of that and then it sounded like from the one that they talked about was I equated it to the
fact that it could heat your house oh wow how that much power in it what what were that what like
so the one they have here what were the costs they didn't even look at the cost I don't think
they're mentioning the cost it looks it's a very fine looking machine the sheet metal work on
it and the paint is yeah perfect and the show but it's it's something I'm sure that is has a
market and is available and they're here at the Linux Fest displaying that yeah I just noticed
some people walking by with one of the most popular pieces of swag here which is the BSD
double horn yeah that light up the BSD booth here has been doing a quick trade and knows
that really a popular one in fact I grabbed one for my daughter when I get home that'll be my
my piece of swag for her will be the little devil horns yeah and there's lots of swag available of
course and I like the arrangement on the general hall where the tables are at and as a I'm going to
say a nonprofit exhibitors table we're kind of grouped around the center then the commercial vendors
are grouped on the outside the hall is I haven't been able to get away to go to a session because
I put a video cam in the get session but there has been yesterday of course it's constant
traffic through and I've noticed people coming in today there are Sunday only at 10 D's one of the
gentlemen I was talking to said he had to work yesterday but he was he was coming right into
day to check things out so I was glad to be um get the booth man today and I've actually had my
friend Brad from work he's here he's kind of helping out with the table there so that's been good
because it looked like I was going to be doing this alone so anything else you want to share with
the HP audience well if I can just put in a quick plug for Mintcast let's do that so
Mintcast is our weekly podcast we generally focus on Linux Mint but we are we do talk about all
things Linux we don't we're not exclusive to Linux Mint we keep an eye on the on the open source
scene in general we typically we'll talk about news for for about half the podcast we cherry pick
about five or six stories that we find of interest and we'll bat them around I'm on the podcast
with two other co-hosts Robin James and we have a nice variance of opinions amongst us in
different backgrounds let's talk about the geographic here you're living what state I'm in Montana
and Robin James are aware Rob's down in Texas and James is over in Oklahoma so have you met either
of them or not in fact I was hoping James was going to be able to make it up to Linux
that's Northwest and he was not able to make it so yeah we've we've never met I've actually
seen Rob on webcam but I have not seen pictures of James don't know what else he looks like we've
been doing this for for a year and over a year now and I I know it's not a unique situation I know
there's a lot of podcasts that are in similar setup but one of the things that we pride ourselves
on is we we've worked hard to to have a good audio output we work hard on our audio we do we have
a live stream so that would be Monday nights at 8 p.m. Eastern we have a live stream you can go
to mincast.org to get information on getting to the live stream we also on Thursdays we release
an edited version of that live stream so we we do I was talking to you earlier about how we've
kind of cut down on some of our editing but we do try and edit out a lot of the ums and the
the pauses and such and to keep it flowing we shoot for an hour and length sometimes we've been
going over lately but we recognize that an hour is really where people want to be or where we
want to be in terms of what we what we output so people get a chance to go check that out I would
recommend it it's we try and keep it entertaining and and we're always looking for feedback too if
if you listen and use something you don't like let us know yeah well real good and I'm
no I listen to mincast every episode and I see the posting on Google Plus and I think you have a
Google Plus yep for tell us what that is so I think it's just mincast out there I you okay we
some of the stuff I didn't set up we have other guys he set up we do have there's mincast and
on Twitter and ideneca as well okay and of course the website mincast.org and the google plus page so
yeah I'll talk a little bit more about mint as long as we're on it so the um people installing mint
um I'm a big fan because I'm not really an advanced hacker and that I use the computer for
the things most people do you're searching the web and then but I have gotten into the command line
a bit but when you download mint and install it you actually are become part of this community and
so that the help channels for mint are what well so what would you recommend people go to do
when they need help and mint okay so there's a great forum out on the mint site so I think it's
just linuxment.org okay there's also they have some IRC channels if people use IRC they're on the
spot chat server and they are linuxment-help there's linuxment.chat and then there's a pimple my
mint which is a general conversation which can be sometimes not safe for work but the linuxment-help and
linuxment.chat are great ones there's always people in there they actually have people from the
community responsible for being in those in those they also have people who are responsible for the
forums so the forums are moderated and you can find great answers there typically when you google
linuxment and any kind of question you're at least some of the results you're going to get are
going to point you back to the forums so great places for for help there obviously the forums you're
going to post and you're going to wait or sometimes you're going to find the answer to your question
just by searching them IRC typically you get faster answers because there's people on there
don't need to say that but obviously proper neta kit is you know you don't want to go in shouting
all caps or demanding answers everybody on there is a volunteer not unlike you know not like yourself
they're they're doing this for help people out so obviously you want to be one of proper practice
proper neta kit when you're when you're on there so okay we're good anything else you want to tell
the HBR audience no I just if you ever get a chance to attend a linux fest you may not be in
the northwest you may we've talked about some other ones I know scale down in Southern California
high olinux fest there's a northeast linux fest up in Worcester mass there's one in South Carolina
southeast linux fest I heard somebody talking about Indiana linux fest right there's some there's
some great ones the nice thing they gave us in our hands out when when we walking with our
registration here in northwest linux fest was a listing of all the festivals that they were aware
of across the United States and I would imagine you guys have listeners outside the states as well
Europe always seems to have something going on and you have a chance to attend one of these it's
great it gets you energized it you come away with ideas you come away with having met people
Dave and I hadn't met before I walked in the door the other day and you know you build relationships
and and like I said you get energized and it's a lot of fun and I'm really glad I'm here this year
and hopefully your listeners will get a chance to attend one when they get a chance okay real good and
so I can smell that barbecue so we hit it for lunch yeah we should okay thank you Scott and thanks it
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