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Think globally, microblog locally
Sun, 04 Dec 2022

While http://centos.passthejoe.net publishes updates for #CentOS Stream 8 and 9, until now http://passthejoe.tilde.institute/centos has only published Stream 8 updates. I am attempting to add Stream 9 to that site. Let's wait and see if it works.

These sites only exists due to the work of @rbowen@mastodon.social — thanks, Rich for your Python script. I hope the sites prove useful. While they were borne out of frustration, the project became a learning experience for me in Hugo, Bash and cross-OS scripting.

Fri, 02 Dec 2022

I've been posting in the #Fediverse for a couple of years now, and until recent events on #Twitter, there hadn't been quite the critical mass of users to make being here vs. there extremely compelling. Those users are here now, and if these communities (very much plural) survive the growing pains, we will continue to really have something special — and not corporate.

I hate to say it, but I decided to go with the Google Chrome browser from the #Flatpak instead of Chromium from the #Debian repo or #Vivaldi from the project's own repo. I ran #Chromium for YEARS until the project decided to kill sync. I resented being pushed into Google Chrome and ran Vivaldi for awhile. But between bugs, performance issues and lack of a Flatpak, I went from Vivaldi to Chrome. Google's browser is smoother and runs cooler, though I miss the Vivaldi features.

I have been running Debian Stable with as many GUI apps installed as local Flatpaks as possible due to issues with root disk space on my encrypted installation. Instead of a full root, I now have 13 GB free out of 29 GB total. Performance of Debian is always excellent on my 2017 HP Envy laptop, and Flatpaks are quick to start and fast to run. I made this change (to free up the root space) a few weeks ago, and it has been great.

Wed, 30 Nov 2022

Epson is going to stop selling laser printers. Here's why - Liam Tung/ZDNET https://www.zdnet.com/article/epson-is-going-to-stop-selling-laser-printers-heres-why/

Tue, 29 Nov 2022

Intentionally making close friends | Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33774353

Intentionally making close friends — Neel Nanda https://www.neelnanda.io/blog/43-making-friends

Mastodon isn't just a replacement for Twitter - Nathan Schneider and Amy Hasinoff/Noēma https://www.noemamag.com/mastodon-isnt-just-a-replacement-for-twitter/

How do transistors work, anyway? - lcamtuf’s thing https://lcamtuf.substack.com/p/how-do-transistors-work-anyway

Dropbox acquires Boxcryptor assets to bring zero-knowledge encryption to file storage - Paul Sawers/TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/29/dropbox-acquires-boxcryptor-assets-to-bring-zero-knowledge-encryption-to-file-storage/

Goodbye, data science – r y x, r https://ryxcommar.com/2022/11/27/goodbye-data-science/

Where does all the cardboard come from? - Matthew Shaer/The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/28/magazine/cardboard-international-paper.html

Ruby adds a new core class called Data to represent simple immutable value objects - Swaathi Kakarla/Saeloun Blog https://blog.saeloun.com/2022/11/22/data-immutable-object.html

Rereading: The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder – James Wallace Harris/Auxiliary Memory https://auxiliarymemory.com/2017/01/06/rereading-the-soul-of-a-new-machine-by-tracy-kidder/

Tue, 15 Nov 2022

Marie Kondo your software stack with open source - Mike Melanson https://github.com/readme/featured/open-source-minimalism

Lemmy - A community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts (it's like federated Reddit) https://lemmy.ml/

Digital books wear out faster than physical books - Internet Archive http://blog.archive.org/2022/11/15/digital-books-wear-out-faster-than-physical-books/

Fix choppy YouTube video playback in Firefox and firefox-esr in Debian Bullseye - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/723814/how-to-fix-choppy-youtube-video-playback-enable-webrender-debian-bullseye

Sat, 12 Nov 2022

I hate to say it, but I decided to try Google Chrome in a Flatpak, and it runs a lot better than Vivaldi, which SHOULD be in a Flatpak at this point (but is not).

Tue, 08 Nov 2022

Raspberry Pi Zero W is mostly frustration if you try to use the GUI. I forgot how crushingly slow it is. I'm getting the no-GUI build of the OS.

I just got an email from the Mozilla Foundation asking for donations. Then I found this article: Mozilla expects to generate more than in revenue this year https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/13/mozilla-expects-to-generate-more-than-500m-in-revenue-this-year/

Some cool Raspberry Pi projects are available from Guysoft https://guysoft.wordpress.com/

I had no idea you can't get Raspberry Pi board anymore. I've had a couple of Pi Zero W boards in a drawer, and I'm starting to put them back into service. The first is going to be a persistent Syncthing desktop that should help my syncing setup. At this point, I'm using 100% Syncthing and 0% Dropbox.

Mon, 07 Nov 2022

This is a reminder that I have an independent microblog full of short, social-media style posts http://updates.passthejoe.net

Fri, 04 Nov 2022

The #Debian installer decided to give my fully encrypted 1 TB drive a 30 GB root, and I didn't take the time to make it bigger. Now I'm running out of space, so my workaround (which IS working) is installing Flatpaks with the --user flag so they go in /home, which is HUGE.

I'm having a problem with stuttering YouTube video in #Firefox — the ESR version — in #Debian Stable. Videos from Twitter, Vimeo and Instagram play fine. All problems clear up in the Firefox Flatpak. https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firefox-esr

Wed, 02 Nov 2022

Does Amazon intentionally slow down your deliveries when you don't have Prime?

Tue, 01 Nov 2022

Google wore me down. I installed #chrome in #debian from Google's repo.

How to use DALL•E 2 to turn text into AI-generated art - Christina Darby/ZDNet https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-use-dalle-2-to-turn-your-wildest-imaginations-into-tangible-art/

Mon, 31 Oct 2022

Have you ever heard of Mosh: the mobile shell? I'm installing in #debian https://mosh.org/

Sat, 29 Oct 2022

How do you install IntelliJ IDEA in Linux? JetBrains Toolbox, Flatpak, individual tarball, or?

Fri, 28 Oct 2022

Julian Bream took it to a whole other level with 'J.S. Bach: Lute Suites, Nos. 1 & 2' in 1965. The album is on Spotify. https://www.julianbreamguitar.com/j.s.-bach--lute-suites--nos.-1---2.html

Kotlin and Android  |  Android Developers https://developer.android.com/kotlin

Complete Kotlin development masterclass 2022 | Udemy https://www.udemy.com/course/kotlinmasterclass/

Kotlin for Beginners: Learning Programming With Kotlin | Udemy https://www.udemy.com/course/kotlin-course/

The Kotlin Programming Language https://kotlinlang.org/

Thu, 27 Oct 2022

distrobox-upgrade --all is the key to updating all of your Distrobox instances with one command. Thanks @castrojo for the tip! https://distrobox.privatedns.org/usage/distrobox-upgrade.html

JetBrains/compose-jb: Compose Multiplatform, a modern UI framework for Kotlin that makes building performant and beautiful user interfaces easy and enjoyable https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-jb

I had been having trouble with slow starts of firefox-esr in Debian Bullseye, but it seems to be resolved with the latest update https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firefox-esr

Sat, 15 Oct 2022

I've been back in Debian 11 for a month and a half, and things have been smooth — as expected. Pretty much everything has been running well, and overall the laptop is staying very cool.

Fri, 07 Oct 2022

My favourite computer, an old Mac - Connor Oliver/Muezza.ca http://muezza.ca/thoughts/favourite_computer/

Thu, 06 Oct 2022

At $32,500, this is the holy grail: Ed Bickert's blonde 1965 Fender Telecaster https://www.12fret.com/instruments/ed-bickerts-blonde-fender-telecaster-1965/

Wed, 05 Oct 2022

3-year-old Bugzilla comment fixes font issues in the Firefox Flatpak. I'm running Debian 11, but I expect this fix will work anywhere. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1621915#c3

Tue, 04 Oct 2022

I am more than a little obsessed with mdBook — the documentation/book platform written in #rustlang. Typical: I'm looking into Rust and am too distracted by the docs tooling to move forward. https://rust-lang.github.io/mdBook/

Mon, 03 Oct 2022

‘There’s endless choice, but you’re not listening’: Fans quitting Spotify to save their love of music - Liz Pelly/The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/sep/27/theres-endless-choice-but-youre-not-listening-fans-quitting-spotify-to-save-their-love-of-music

Sun, 02 Oct 2022

Install the Rust Programming Language https://www.rust-lang.org/tools/install

Thu, 22 Sep 2022

I am now using Syncthing on 57 GB of data on my way to 200 GB. I also haven't organized or otherwise even looked at most of these files over the past many years. So eventually I will sync less, I hope. https://syncthing.net

Tue, 20 Sep 2022

I am setting up Syncthing to sync about 300 GB of data between two computers https://syncthing.net/

Sat, 17 Sep 2022

When it comes to my HP laptop running quickly and cool, Debian Stable is doing an excellent job

I just installed Syncthing on my Debian laptop and started the service automatically with systemd https://docs.syncthing.net/users/autostart.html#

Sun, 11 Sep 2022

The reason I have so many updates right now is the release of @Debian 11.5 https://www.debian.org/News/2022/2022091002

Fri, 09 Sep 2022

Falling back from Fedora Silverblue 36 to Debian Stable 11 fixed a couple of bugs:

In LibreOffice Calc, ctrl-; spits out the date

In Vim, no need to hit Enter to clear command line after cd

(But gEdit scrolling issue WAS fixed in Fedora!)

Tue, 06 Sep 2022

I've been back in Debian on my laptop for about a week, and it's been uneventfully smooth. I'd probably say the same if I were going from Debian to Fedora instead of Fedora to Debian.

Sun, 04 Sep 2022

I was on TikTok for 30 days: it is manipulative, addictive, and harmful to privacy - Luiza Jarovsky https://scribe.rip/i-was-on-tiktok-for-30-days-it-is-manipulative-addictive-and-harmful-to-privacy-9e25445a9122

Things like the early (and expert) adoption of PulseAudio, Wayland, Pipewire, the latest GNOME and other innovations keeps me coming back to @fedora, even if I have recently moved to the predictable and quiet @debian Stable

Thu, 01 Sep 2022

I am enjoying setting up and using my new Debian 11 (Stable) system on my HP Envy laptop. It's this laptop's second time running Debian, and things have been smooth and predictable.

Wed, 31 Aug 2022

One of the reasons I paused on NixOS was the /nix/store size. My VM filled up pretty quickly. Not ruling it out forever but passing for now. https://www.reddit.com/r/NixOS/comments/x1sfff/nixstore/

Both Debian and Fedora are my home distros. I go back and forth with them. When I got my first SSD, I put Debian on it. When I got my second SSD, I put Fedora Silverblue on it. Now I've gone back to Debian on the newer SSD. My old iMac has run Debian for a long time.

There were a lot of things I liked about Fedora Silverblue, but the difficulty of developing in Flatpaks wasn't one of them. Toolboxes are great, but the Geany Flatpak couldn't compile or run anything. I would need a separate Geany in every Toolbox.

I got really "attached" to EasySSH in Fedora Silverblue. Now I have it as a package in Debian, and it's all set up. https://github.com/muriloventuroso/easyssh