January 2026 - Talk - lists.gtalug.org

Dollar Store Karaoke "Microphone"
by Colin McGregor 18 Jan '26

18 Jan '26

My singing voice is such that I figure I should be banned from karaoke. Still for the likes of Zoom calls I did take an interest when I saw a rechargeable "karaoke microphone" (available in white, black, and pink) with Bluetooth for $5 (plus tax) at Dollarama. So, I bought one in black, charged it, and connected it via Bluetooth to my Debian Linux (13, aka Trixie) desktop PC. What initially puzzled me was my PC didn't see the "karaoke microphone" as a microphone, it saw it as a speaker. The idea being I take it that you play whatever background music you want and then sing over top of that. When running the "JuK" MP3 player program I found the "+" / "-" buttons on the "microphone" would let you step forwards / backwards through the audio file collection. Besides the power on/off button, the "+" / "-" buttons there is a button with scissors on it (mute) and one labeled "M" (untested, but I gather it is for "duet" mode), On the bottom of the "microphone" is a microSD card slot (I presume for loading with background music files, I didn't test this). With the microscope was included a very short USB A to USB C cable for recharging the "microphone". As noted, I am not a karaoke person, but while not for me, I can see a place for this. I am used to thinking of karaoke set-ups being big / complex, but one (or more) of these "microphones" plus a small laptop PC and you could be off to the races (assuming you don't need massive volume). Or even one (or more) of these "microphones" with microSD cards plus a booklet of song lyrics and you might have a karaoke system in a large pocket. I can also picture these "microphones" being nightmare fuel for parents on a long road trip with their kids :-) ...

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Dollar Store Webcam...
by Colin McGregor 16 Jan '26

16 Jan '26

Last week I was in Dollarama and saw they had a webcam with a built-in microphone for $5.00 (plus tax) under the name "WORK FROM HOME WITH VIVITAR". I bought it, it works, but... The images from the camera are clear, but the resolution is ... not so good (640 x 480). The connector for the camera is USB 2.0. The built-in microphone has a 3.5 audio plug (which I didn't test). So this means you will need an microphone input connector on you computer to use the microphone, If you want to use this was a computer without a microphone connector (yes, I am looking at you Raspberry Pi computers) you will also need the likes of a USB sound card, or put another way you will need two USB ports to fully support this webcam if your computer doesn't have a microphone jack built in. Also, adding even a low-end USB sound card would more than double the cost of this set-up... The camera base is designed to clip over the top of an LCD monitor, if you want to use this camera on a desktop or on a tripod you will have to jury-rig something. I can see some use cases for a $5 webcam, put it in a somewhat dangerous place where you know the camera might get damaged or destroyed, sure, no great loss if things go to @#$%. Need a back-up webcam in case your good webcam fails, sure it is better than nothing (but not by a lot). Want to dabble with home security systems, or simple robots, yes this could be fine to get started with. As a day-in/day-out video conference webcam with "important" people, NO!!!! As I see it this webcam is a decent value for the $, just so few $ that you should pay attention to the camera's ... limitations. Colin.

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Which video player
by William Park 15 Jan '26

15 Jan '26

Slackware comes with "MPlayer" as default for video player. It's still available on CachyOS, but it doesn't show up on menu. Command only. I'm thinking, it may not be "modern" way. So, I tried - mplayer - mpv - haruna - vlc on CachyOS, and they all play the same. Which one do you use? Or, end up choosing? --William

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Stalwart email server software: anyone know anything?
by Ron 14 Jan '26

14 Jan '26

Has anyone on this list got hands-on experience with Stalwart email server software? https://stalw.art/ It's an entire email stack written in Rust. Replaces Postfix, Dovecot, OpenDKIM, fail-2-ban, Mailman (has a built-in mailing list, no need for the nightmare that is MM anymore), supports CalDAV, CardDAV, WebDAV, JMAP, IMAP, POP3, anti-spam, Sieve, etc. Web site's really fast, even the management console run from inside a Docker container is fast, well designed, well laid out. It's appealing to shed the 1,000+ options for Postfix, even more for Dovecot, plus all the ancillary tools required to run email. On the other hand, Postfix & Dovecot are what I know - and learned at great cost (time & frustration), and are where the jobs are. What brought me to this is, looking for a way to offer contacts & calendar syncing along with email hosting. NextCloud was my first choice, but trying to get the AIO (All In One) to support multiple domains in one instance is not well supported as best I can tell.

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Anyone doing Zoom on Linux
by William Park 13 Jan '26

13 Jan '26

Anyone using Zoom on Linux? What is your camera/speaker/mic setup? All in one, or separate? Background: ----------- I want to use Zoom on my new CachyOS desktop. Zoom package (from vendor site) installs okay, along with its dependencies. Problem is "mic". - I have lots of 3.5mm earphones/mic (from old phones) with single combo plug. Problem is, my desktop has separate "mic" jack. Also, some of 3.5mm jacks are broken. - So, I bought $5 bluetooth speaker from Dollarama, which has speaker and mic. Speaker works with CachyOS, but not mic. - I have old USB "webcam", that is camera only. - Maybe, all I need is USB "headset" (headphones + mic)?

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Debian "testing" -- not bad
by William Park 13 Jan '26

13 Jan '26

(Double posted, so reply to your list) I've been looking for a distro with recent KDE and recent kerne*l*. So, the benchmark was *Kubuntu* 25.10 (v6.4 KDE, v6.17 kernel). 1. Started with *Mint* + "apt install kde-full". Result was comparable to Kubuntu LTS, ie. v5.27 KDE, v6.14 kernel. Makes sense, since Mint is based on Ubuntu LTS. 2. Then, tried *LMDE* + "apt install kde-full". I was surprised to get a rather recent v6.3 KDE with v6.12 kernel. I was expecting an old KDE, even older than Mint version. 3. So, decided to try *Debian* *testing* + KDE. I got v6.5.4 KDE (latest) and v6.17.12 kernel. Not bad. Right now, *Debian testing* is compiling v6.12.62 and v6.18.1 kernels for Raspberry Pi Zero 2W. We'll see how it goes. To those using Debian testing, how would you rate its stability? Is it suitable for daily PC?

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Meeting Reminder
by Alan Heighway 12 Jan '26

12 Jan '26

GTALug Monthly Meeting <https://www.gtalug.org/?p=369> Description: Join us this month for a round table discussion with the general membership, where participants will have the opportunity to share ideas, raise questions, and engage in open dialogue on topics important to our community. Speaker: All of you! Agenda: 1. Discussion 2. Adjournment Date / Time: January 13th, 2025 19:30 EST Location: Online using Nextcloud: https://hub.gtalug.org/call/7m45sf9i *A*lan *H*eighway <http://heighway.ca/> heighway.ca 416-712-5247 VA3WAH / VA3YKZ [image: Please consider the environment before printing]

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issue with gimp
by CAREY SCHUG 10 Jan '26

10 Jan '26

I only run gimp on my main desktop computer. I use it from weekly, up to 6 weeks apart. I can't open any of my projects, I get this error message: Opening '/home/carey/sourcematerial/myproject.xcf' failed: XCF error: unsupported XCF file version 19 encountered which a query tells me means the file was created with a newer version of gimp than I have. I have not knowingly backleveled. I could try to update to see if there is a newer gimp, but thought I'd ask here in case that might only make it worse. Carey

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Migration: Slackware -> CachyOS
by William Park 08 Jan '26

08 Jan '26

It took 30+ years, but I finally managed to migrate from Slackware, to CachyOS. I can now hang out with all the cool kids. These are my observations: 1. BTRFS was excellent and defining choice, in hind sight. Snapshot makes backup so easy. I'm willing to take speed hit, but I found it's quite fast. BTRFS filesystem has "subvolume", eg. for CachyOS, - root is "@" subvolume, mounted at / - home is "@home" subvolume, mounted at /home So, - to back up /home within the current filesystem, just take snapshot. - to back up to another BTRFS filesystem, do "btrfs send | btrfs receive". I see 60MB/s throughput on my machine with SATA2 harddisks. 2. Font was surprising. Using same Firefox, same website, - Fedora has the best fonts. - CachyOS is close second. - OpenSUSE has the worst fonts. 3. CachyOS is the fastest. Fedora and OpenSUSE felt about the same in speed. 4. Vim is Vim is Vim. It should be, but each distro has their own configuration stack. You have to watch out for that. I took me some time to get "indentation" that Slackware gives you by default. Conclusion: ----------- I'm satisfied with CachyOS, so far. I recommend people to try BTRFS distros. It will make your backup much easier. And, ability to do "rollback" is bonus. --William

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systemd timer VS crontab
by William Park 06 Jan '26

06 Jan '26

Hi all, 1. For cron jobs, do you use - systemd timer/service, eg. job.timer, job.service, OR - traditional crontab from /etc/cron.daily/job, ... ? 2. After translating to "systemd" scripts, how is the maintenance? --William

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