466: From Server Purgatory to Paradise & The 30th Birthday of Tux!

Welcome to Episode 466 of Destination Linux! After a week away dealing with the literal "ghosts in the machines," Ryan returns to join Jill and Zeb, proving you can't keep a good host down.

We kick off the show with an important community feedback segment addressing a "Puzzled Parent" who wants to keep their kids safe online using open-source tools. The team breaks down excellent FOSS solutions for the Linux desktop, router-level blocking (like Pi-hole and NextDNS), and open-source mobile tools for /e/OS like NetGuard and TimeLimit.

Next, Ryan takes us on his personal journey from Server Purgatory to Paradise. He walks through setting up a low-power, budget-friendly HP Prodesk mini-server from eBay, detailing his troubleshooting nightmare with an unbaked Ubuntu install, his redemption using Fedora, and how he deployed a modern stack using Podman, Cockpit, Tailscale, and Filebrowser.

In hardware news, Jill delivers some bittersweet "end of an era" updates as the classic AMD K5 processor family and the Intel 486 are officially deprecated and removed from the upcoming Linux Kernel. We discuss why 30-year-old museum-grade hardware is being phased out due to maintenance burdens and share the best retro-distributions to keep your vintage rigs alive.

Finally, Zeb brings us up to speed on the "Dirty Frag" local privilege escalation vulnerability and how the latest Linux kernel stable releases fully mitigate it. We wrap up the show by celebrating the 30th birthday of Tux the Penguin, sharing the hilarious origin story of how a zoo animal bite in 1993 led to Larry Ewing designing the ultimate mascot in GIMP.

Show Timestamps:

00:00:00 Welcome to Destination Linux
00:02:03 Patron Event Announcement
00:05:33 Community Feedback
00:18:19 Sponsored by Sandfly Security
00:23:08 Linux Drops Support for the AMD K5
00:34:44 Building the DL Server
00:47:32 Dirty Frag Fix Released
00:54:11 Tux Turns Thirty
01:00:42 Software Pick: DisMail
01:01:42 Closing Thoughts

Show Note References

• Patreon Support : patreon.com/destinationlinux
• Sandfly Security : deviantairwaves.com/sandfly
• Linux Kernel Deprecates AMD K5 (Phoronix) : shorturl.at/T7J7y
• Filebrowser Open Source File Manager : filebrowser.org/index.html
• Tailscale Mesh VPN : tailscale.com/
• Podman Container Engine : podman.io/
• Cockpit Project Server Management : cockpit-project.org/running
• Linux Kernel 7.0.6 & Dirty Frag Mitigation (Phoronix) : phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0.6-Released
• Tux the Penguin Mascot Turns 30 (XDA) : phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0.6-Released
• Destination Linux Official Store : shop.deviantairwaves.com/