I’m not sure how to go about adding these; I can try the usual installation processes, but don’t know what to do if that fails.

I installed Ubuntu Mate 16.04 just for the halibut. It was interesting to see Kernel 4.4 again. After a few days, I attempted to upgrade to 18.04 using the normal upgrade path… it took a very, very long time and I had to leave it running to go to work. When I came home, it hadn’t quite reached halfway and had frozen. I couldn’t unfreeze it, so I rebooted, and it didn’t boot anymore, so I reinstalled it. I was just going to leave it alone, but after input from the DHD Telegram group, I tried it again last night, and experienced the same issue although at a later point in the files installation procedure than before. The drive has no issues I can find; either I have a bad ISO burn or my machine is subtly damaged. I installed Manjaro on it after that happened, and it installed cleanly and runs.

BUT, just before the show, I decided to replace KDE neon on my Kudu with Linux Mint 19.3 Mate. Everything installed fine. Then I went to check my other boots;. there are a total of 3 distros on this machine: OpenMandriva 4.1, Manjaro, and now Mint. OpenMandriva booted fine. But when I selected Manjaro on the Grub menu, the screen went black and there was no further disk activity — I couldn’t even do a three-finger reboot, I had to hold down the power button. I talked to the members of the Telegram group, and other than one person saying that he felt Grub Customizer broke it (unproven since 2013), I got no help. I went back into Mint and ran “ sudo update-grub ” but that didn’t change anything. I will reinstall Manjaro after the show today.

We’re getting ready for the next Distrohoppers’ Digest this Thursday the 9th of April. I think I have a pretty good review of Manjaro ready. I’m also using OpenMandriva more and coming to terms with it much better than anything I’ve used which is not apt-based.

And I’ve just found Linux Mint Telegram group, apparently not related to Mint in any way. It’s a smallish group. But it has allowed me to expose our podcast to another group of probably-interested people.

We are almost done reading Grave Peril. We have the next book queued up already. I’m disappointed in the use of magic to stop bullets — it’s not like Frank Triggaltheron’s trick in Demon Squad, but an actual force field, and, being an experienced magic user, I don’t find that realistic. Otherwise, we are greatly enjoying the books.