Introduction

This is the final “Cooking With Linux” episode on the Computer America radio show this year. It’s the holidays and Christmas is just a few days away with Santa getting ready to make his ’round the world annual present drop. It’s also the time of year when we all watch Christmas movies and listen to Christmas music. It’s also the time for the annual sitting down to watch “A Christmas Carol”, specifically the 1951 version with Alastair Sim, the best Scrooge there ever was. Incidentally, the movie was originally released as “Scrooge”.

Before we get too comfortable with the “Bah humbugs!”, check out my other Cooking With Linux escapades . . .

“Cooking With Linux” on Flipboard https://flipboard.com/@wftl/cooking-with-linux-oun4gv1ly

Subscribe to Marcel’s YouTube channel where you can view the latest editions of the Cooking With Linux show.
https://www.youtube.com/user/freethinkeratlarge/

My own site is http://marcelgagne.com where I talk about whatever comes into my head, including Linux and Open Source software. If you just want the Linux and Open Source stuff, head over to http://cookingwithlinux.com .

Today’s Wine

My goodness, it must be the season because today’s wine is eggnog. In this case, if I must mention a specific eggnog, it’s President’s Choice Candy Cane Egg with just a little Mount Gay Barbados Rum. Because I’m a grown up.

News, Rumours, etc

It’s a Solstice miracle. Spotify has finally released a new client for Linux users.

https://www.spotify.com/ca-en/download/linux/

Here it is, running on my Kubuntu 17.10 desktop. Yes, I’ve switched distributions, again.

I’ve gone all in on the Google Home toys. We now have one Google Home and two minis in the house. God I hope Google isn’t evil.

Speaking of security and privacy . . .

Remember Librem 5, from Puri.sm? A security focused smartphone that raised a whole pile of money in a Kickstarter? Well, there’s a personal privacy focused open source phone project on the block and this one doesn’t ask that you buy their phone. It focuses instead on providing custom Android ROMs based on LineageOS.

Eelo is the brainchild of Gaël Duval, a longtime Linux developer and the man who created Mandrake Linux. You can read all about it here.

https://eelo.io/

Here’s a great idea for this season of giving. How about using your computer to advance scientific research without actually doing anything? Instead of trying to use vast amounts of energy mining Bitcoins, why not direct those spare computer cycles to finding a cure for cancer or Zika or AIDS? You can even run the client in the background while you work. Check out the World Community Grid for details.

World Community Grid : https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/discover.action

The Linux client to help you do this is called BOINC and you can find it in your distribution’s repositories (I installed mine with “apt install boinc”) or you can visit the project site athttp://boinc.berkeley.edu/ .

Distribution Focus

In the spirit of distributions past, let me direct you to a repository of old, and sometimes very old, Linux distributions. If you want to see how much Linux has changed and you have some time to kill, this can be a blast.

https://old-linux.com/

That’s a nicely organized site, but there are FTP sites in Universities around the world that keep archival copies of Linux distributions. For example, there’s this one.

http://ftp.riken.go.jp/Linux/

To that end, and since we’ve talked about the Eelo project, I’m going to take you back to July 23, 1998 when the first version of Mandrake Linux, at version 5.1, was released to the world. This is what the installer looked like back in 1998.

Check out the Mandrake Linux login screen from the “before time”. Well, before the present time anyhow.

http://www.linuxandubuntu.com/home/linux-distros-that-discontinued-unexpectedly

Linux Playtime

The season is, of course, all about toys. And games. So here’s a list of Linux gaming Websites you should check out if you need something less stressful to keep you busy.

Gaming on Linux : https://www.gamingonlinux.com/

Boiling Steam : https://boilingsteam.com/

LInux Game Database : https://lgdb.org/